Living the Past (sequel to A New Titan)
by Comorep677
Summary: Two years have passed since the World Tournament and the passing of their closest friend, and a certain promise is carried out that will take our Teen Titans through time to revive their closest friend against those that would see it all vanish. Meanwhile, peril in the afterlife is making itself real through Raven, and the Titans' only hope to stop it is a time-hop and a wish away.
1. Times have Changed

**OWN NADA**

 **THIS IS THE SEQUEL TO "WINNER TAKE ALL" AND "A NEW TITAN." READ THOSE FIRST, OR NOT.**

 **THANK YOU TO ALL MY FANS FOR YOUR PATIENCE. I WILL UPDATE THIS WHEN I HAVE TIME.**

* * *

Raven's eyes flew open and she sat up in the bed in a cold sweat, panting and frantically looking around her dark room. "Another dream," she said in between breaths. She heard a knock at the door.

"Raven," Robin's voice said from outside the door. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine," she said, noticing the invisible ancient markings on her grey skin turn orange and glow with a dark chi. "It was just a dream."

"Let me in, Raven," Robin said, banging on the door now. Raven got out of her neat bed and floated across the room with her hood over her head. Ever since that day, she had started wearing it again. Raven touched the door and immediately yanked back. It was hot.

"What's going on out there?" she asked.

"I said let me in," Robin's voice growled with a supernatural undertone. Raven's eyes widened and suddenly the knocking stopped. She heard heavy breathing just beyond the door. She slowly slid the door opened and screamed, seeing Robin's bloody, twisted carcass with his eyeballs removed and ancient runes all over his skin sitting on a pike stuck in the ground. She turned around and three pairs of red eyes opened in front of her;

"Hello, daughter," a deep voice belonging to whoever had the eyes said.

Raven found herself back in her bed in a cold sweat, screaming bloody murder. Was it just another dream? She hopped out of bed and yanked open the door, looking down the halls to make sure everything was real and that she was awake. The other Titans emerged from their rooms in pajamas. Robin had gotten taller and more muscular. His hair was slightly shorter and kept in a neater cut, and his eyes were still just as cold as before. Puberty really did Beast Boy good, with his lean frame turning into wide and solid muscle and a chiseled, pointed jawline and barely prominent cheekbones. He was taller now, the second tallest of the group rivaled with Starfire. The Tamaranean really grew out, her long, straight hair was now poofy and wavy. Her eyes glowed green all the time and her skin became a more prominent orange hue. Her slim body was now muscular and curvy, filling out spandex like no other. That benefitted the team when she would distract the enemy with her assets, albeit unintentionally on her end. Cyborg looked almost the same, save for a small patch of black, curly hair on the skin part of his skull. Raven grew out too, with her toned body squeezed into her black costume gathering Garfield's attention regularly. The demonic markings on her skin became faint scars. "No, go back to bed, it was just another dream."

"Was it about your father?" Starfire asked, floating across the room and putting her arm around her friend.

Raven nodded with a frown and reluctantly accepted the hug from her friend. "Rae," Garfield said, also concerned that these frequent dreams were foreshadowing something worse. You don't just 'get' demonic tattoos you don't remember getting put on. "If your father ever comes back, just know that I'll be the first to take him. You have nothing to worry about as long as we're here."

"Was there anything different in this dream than the last ones?" Robin asked. He had been tracking the events of her dreams, considering how she was a portal and all.

Raven shook her head. "It was the same theme; he's coming back, he kills you all, I'm taken by him."

Robin's brows furrowed. "Damn," he said, hoping that at least something would have changed. "Well, do you need anything? Water?"

"No, no, I'm fine," Raven said; her quick convulsion seconds later said the opposite. She backed up toward the headboard and pointed at the edge of her bed, her eyes glowing red with fear. "Stay away from me!" she snapped.

Beast Boy darted forward and held her arms tightly. "Raven! Raven! Get a hold of yourself! It's not real!" He stared into the eyes of the demon king's daughter and noticed the silhouette of a tall man in the background by the door. "Mister Piccolo!" he exclaimed, getting pushed aside by the tall, green man in purple gi with a white cape and turban.

Piccolo held Raven by the shoulders and glared into her eyes, into the entity attacking her. "As the active Kami of this planet, I command that you leave and never come back." Piccolo gripped Raven's forehead with his hand and slowly pulled back, ripping a small, spindly red demon from her soul. "Hmph. Get lost." He crumpled the squealing imp like a piece of paper and crushed it in his hands. Raven went limp in Garfield's arms.

Beast Boy looked up at the Namekian for help. "It's been pretty bad recently, doing the incantation she taught us hasn't helped very much."

"And her power readings are off the charts," Cyborg said, "whatever's targeting her has been gaining momentum recently."

"They're getting ballsy," Piccolo said, helping Garfield tuck her back into bed. "The Master's presence set something off two years ago, something possibly even worse than the Ma-Djinn or maybe an extension."

Robin recalled what happened after everyone went home. Things were quiet in Jump City for a little while, the Hive Five stayed scarce and the Titans got to continue their training. With Young Justice and the newest metahumans from the tournament among their ranks, dealing with crime across the world the League couldn't cover was made easy. It was a dark day for evil, and despite how much the Titans missed their friend, the correspondence created after his passing built a crime-fighting machine the spiky-haired powerhouse would have been proud of. He waited on Trunks' arrival to put the events in motion to bring him back, but it had been a while. He figured it took more than a bribe and snuffed out cameras to get the time lords to look the other way, or to not see at all. Then the nightmares started. They happened sporadically at first, but over time they became more and more frequent until the Titans would start taking shifts outside her door at night. Her father wouldn't leave her alone. "We need to start fighting it, as soon as Raven wakes up I need all of us to practice our Mafuba."

"This isn't something that can just be contained," the wise mentor of the world's strongest said. "To get this at the source we would need to deliver the fight to Trigon."

"The problem is," Cyborg said, "Trigon hasn't even revealed where he is yet. We would need to be dead to find that out, and that's something I won't be volunteering for."

"I wouldn't put it past you," Robin said, flipping on the light switch. Her room was kept pretty tidy, a little clutter from schoolwork here and there but nothing horribly messy, "I just need to figure out what we would do in the event the portal out of Raven opened." He clenched his fists and looked at Piccolo bitterly. "I hate to say it, but we're not Saiyans."

"Is Trunks coming?" Piccolo asked, following the Titans out of the room.

"He said he would come when the time was the right," Starfire said with a sigh, "but that time has not come. I begin to fear that it may never come."

They walked into the living room and Beast Boy and Cyborg sat around the table with lab notebooks and piles of textbooks sprawled by the cereal boxes guarding the edge. Although their friend was a spouting demonic fountain, midterms seemed a bit scarier. Winter break was in two weeks, and in that time they could devote 100 percent of their time to saving Raven. Robin and Starfire sat on the couch, tired, stressed, and overworked. "Remember that Trunks was his student. He would never abandon him in his time of need," Piccolo said. "These are the Kai of Time we're dealing with. You travel through time and let them notice, their agents will come for you. It's a good thing one of them is a Super Saiyan."

"Does he not realize _two years_ have passed?" Starfire exclaimed, her voice sharp yet frail. "He said he would be here soon! We just want our friend back!"

"Starfire," Robin said sternly yet calmly. "Just relax. If he does come, we will do our damndest to bring him back. If he doesn't, we find another way. If we can't, we press forward and move on."

The Tamaranean let her fists open and slumped back in her seat. "Things were not like this before."

Piccolo stood up. "I have to leave. Just remember that the Mafuba must only be used in extraneous circumstances. If she wakes up again, contact me immediately."

"Thanks, Mister Piccolo," Robin said, seeing Piccolo free fall out the window and sail into the night. Sometimes he was still amazed by the sight of it, a man simply taking off into the air that wasn't a League member, rather a fighter from a time long past. Things had taken a major left turn since the day they met his student, he was thankful for the opportunity of growing with his team through this experience. They didn't want it to be over, and with Trunks' plan set in place, they hoped it wouldn't be.

"I am going back to bed," Starfire said, giving one small reassuring smile to her teammates before returning to her room. She was far more reserved, Robin remembered, for the first three

months or so after the tournament. Superboy had seen Starfire on and off, but she wouldn't open up to him like she would to the deceased.

Robin turned to his teammates continuing their second all-nighter that week. "What are you guys studying?"

"Math 53, multivariable calc," Cyborg droned. "After that we're going over our gen chem notes. You know chem, engineering, and math are back to back on tuesday, right? Finals week is gonna be insane."

"But hey, after Wednesday, we can finally chill," Garfield said hopingly. "We're not premed or anything dude, we just gotta cruise on a 3.3 until grad, get that PhD, and we'll be set." He turned his academic career around his senior year of high school, motivated to get into the same college as the rest of his friends. They all were finishing their first semester at UC Berkeley, just on the other side of the Bay. It was affordable, and Jump City neighbored the campus.

"Let me grab my books," Robin said, heading toward his room, "I think I won't be going back to sleep."

"Cool cool," Beast Boy yawned, looking at the clock on the wall. They had three hours until their 8AM class. "If we fall asleep, just wake us up, okay? Missing lecture is suicide."

* * *

"And if you look at the board," the professor in Raven's 11AM Demonology class said, pointing to a list of demon names in Hebrew with a red laser pointer. "You can see where the names get their meaning from. It's almost like they were born to be bad," she laughed in the nearly empty lecture hall for the review session one week before the final. "No? Nothing? Really?"

Raven sat near the back of the class in the large lecture hall, simply swirling her spoon in her tea. She never took notes, it's not like any of this stuff was new. She needed the A in that class to balance Linear Algebra and general chemistry, so she took this one for fun. She wore a blue sweater with "CAL" in golden letters across the chest with a short black skirt, her legs crossed and her entire demeanor exuding boredom. She looked at the Trigon symbol on her wrist to see if it was still growing, maybe she can morph into one of the subjects on the board and eat the class before chemistry lab at one. Her phone buzzed in her pocket as the teacher dismissed the class and she looked at it, seeing a message from Starfire asking her if she wanted lunch before lab. Raven shrugged. She could eat and had about ninety minutes until her next class. She gathered her belongings and left the Greek-styled building spitting her out into a stream of other cramming and stressed students. She put up her hood to fight the sun but for even a scarier purpose: to prevent flyering. She passed under the green gate arch leading onto a flat and open area vital for club to student interaction. Drones, she saw, walking, talking, moving like students, passing out flyers to uninterested passers-by under the observing an uncaring Californian sun countered by the school breeze. She figured they were once students, before they sold their soul to extracurriculars. She walked through with her death glare just sub-demonic and her walk confident and swift- they preyed upon the gullible, the weak, and the slow. The flyerers assaulted her worse than any villain.

"Interested in medicine?" one struck.

"Are you pre-law?" another shot.

"Do you like consulting?" the last one kicked, but Raven knew how to dodge. She slipped through Sproul, the name fitting for the maze of tables sprawled out on the bricks, and headed toward the west side of campus where Starfire and the other Titans sent her snaps of Beast Boy burning his tongue on hot chocolate. She let out a small giggle to the photos and continued up the hill, eventually just getting bored of walking and running faster than the human eye could process all the way to the artsy coffee shop. She saw her friends in the back, with Cyborg and Beast Boy sitting at an adjacent table with a box of pizza.

"There's a pizza place next door," Garfield said, seeing her sit at the edge of the booth next to Starfire and Robin. "Want a slice?"

They had pizza for dinner and breakfast. "No thanks. What's good here?"

Beast Boy shrugged. "Dunno. Apparently Kory's new _boyfriend_ keeps taking her here on dates."

"He is _not_ my boyfriend, Rachel!" Starfire clarified over Garfield's laughing. "Get the latte of vanillas with the croissants from France."

It sounded good. She went up to the unenthused cashier and gave them her name and order, but when she turned around, her team had left the table. "Miss," the cashier said, "would you like your receipt?"

Raven took out her communicator and took the receipt anyway, quickly stepping outside and through a portal to the top of the school's tower where the rest of her team was already waiting. Her stomach growled. "Crime has a positive correlation with hunger, if Math 54 has taught me anything."

"You're right about that, Rae," Victor said, looking over the campus and into Jump City. "Dick, what are we _studying_?"

"It's the HIVE, a big operation too, down at the Museum of Natural History," Robin said, turning toward the spiral staircases leading down the tower. "We might not need to hit the gym today after all."

The team chuckled and followed their leader outside. He began a slight jog with the following in a tight eagle formation, speeding up until they became five blurs. They took off into the clear blue sky as streaks of white and sailed over the city, landing in front of a three story tall, Greek-styled building with large banners in front of the mosaic windows displaying the latest building was in a dense city block that had already been closed off as the police started moving in. Five black SUVs with the yellow hexagon on the side lined the road just off the entrance by a staircase up. The Titans flew past the police and through the front doors, charging evil head on and leaving evil unmatched.

It had become unpopular for west coast crimes, Robin chuckled, to say his favorite three words around other criminals, some of them seriously hurt. "Teen Titans: Go!" he commanded, bringing back that nostalgic feeling he always got when saying those words. They reminded him of their first outing as a team, but it wasn't the longing for the past that made him a little sad to say it.

There used to be a sixth.

 **ARE YOU EXCITED FOR PART 3? WILL YOU KNOW WHO RETURN? WILL TRUNKS CARRY ON HIS PROMISES? CAN RAVEN KEEP TRIGON AT BAY? REVIEW WITH YOUR THOUGHTS/PREDICTIONS AND FEEL FREE TO PM ME QUESTIONS.**


	2. Making Himself Known

**NNNNNADA**

The five Titans stood in the entrance of the two-story natural history museum, white marble staircases on either side with a T. Rex skeleton standing upright in the center as the museum's jewel. Civilians rushed past them amidst the familiar cackle of the HIVE in the center as they made their way toward the archives. The Titans floated above the ground, spotting the five ringleaders and their small squadron of henchmen racing toward a flight of stairs on the other end of the room leading downward. Beast Boy smirked and pounded his fists together, spiking a green aura around his purple and black spandex jumpsuit. "Let's kick some butt," he said, roaring into a green flying serpent with scales and bright red eyes. Starfire and Raven flanked him while Cyborg and Robin led the charge from above. Beast Boy surprised the HIVE by flying them into a circle, suppressing their forces with well-placed green ki blasts from his mouth.

Jinx and the other four HIVE elites turned around with a grimace, brandishing their own special powers before settling into their battle stances. Many of the HIVE soldiers ran- they wouldn't do it before, but ever since the Titans came back from the Tournament, they would rather deal with members of the League. "You again?!" Jinx snarled. "If you think you're going to take us down so easily this time, you're gonna be sorry-"

Raven angrily kicked her in the face, sending her rolling down the stairs. Gizmo and the others looked back nervously, seeing their leader sprawled out on the carpet unconscious. Mammoth let out a cry of rage that was silenced by one swift punch from Starfire, and Gizmo's escape was ended by one key strike with Cyborg's sonic blaster. "C'mon man, this isn't fun anymore!"

Robin chuckled at Billy Numerous' attempts to surround him. "We gotcha now, boy!" They charged him, throwing punches and kicks from all angles. The master apprentice dodged them all and returned with his own precise jabs, knocking them down and putting them out of the fight.

Beast Boy morphed back into his human form and glared at See-More. "So, what's it gonna be?"

See-More swallowed nervously at Garfield's hands morphing into big, werewolf-like claws. He grew three feet of solid muscle and his ears grew outward, his nose morphing into a snout and a green wolf tail extending from his lower back. He backed away and went for the door. "I'm out of here! Sorry guys!"

Raven intercepted him faster than lightning and shattered his goggles with a charged punch. The team didn't bother celebrating; that was too easy. They rounded up the rest of the HIVE soldiers and tossed them into police cars, once they arrived. The five Titans stood outside the museum. "What are your plans for the rest of the day?" Robin asked everyone. "It's two o'clock now."

"I have the lab class from three to seven with Raven," Starfire said. "Boba afterward?" she suggested.

"There's a review session in Etcheverry, seven to nine," Garfield yawned. "I mean I'll probably just skip it so I can nap but I'd feel guilty leaving Cyborg on-"

"We're in a mechanical engineering class, one you shouldn't even be in because you're bioengineering," Cyborg said bluntly, looking down at himself. "I am a mechanical product of engineering. I don't know about you, but this exam's gonna be a glorified BuzzFeed personality test for me."

"Boba… now?" Robin suggested. "My next class is at four."

Silence fell upon the group.

"Boba now," Robin said happily as if the problem had been settled.

"In costume?" Garfield said. "I mean, it's not like we're gonna say no."

"Let's hurry back to the tower then," Robin said, stepping forward and vanishing with the wind. They appeared at the entrance to Sproul in their ordinary clothing once again and headed toward the small but busy bubble tea restaurant where college students sat around tables, talked, and chilled for a little while with gummy, black tapioca pearls in milk tea.

"The line is pretty long," Starfire said, seeing their fellow students snake their way in an S-shaped curve leading outside.

"This place gets through long lines pretty fast," Garfield said, "roughly fifty point nine seconds per beverage. If we stay in our spot now, we should have our drinks in 11 minutes."

The rest of the team looked at a certain Garfield in surprise.

"I…" Garfield chuckled. "I spent all of my meal points here."

The team shrugged it off as something that happened regularly. As they waited in the line, Raven found her spot to be more and more unbearable. The lights, voices, and heat, even wit the ceiling fans, were becoming too much. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, placing a hand over her right eye. The pain stabbed like a knife through her head and down her back, making her stumble back into Beast Boy's arms.

"Rae," Garfield said, "are you alright?"

Raven pushed herself to her feet, looking around for any witnesses. People were too invested in their drinks. "Yeah, yes, I'm fine," she said, noticing just how bright the lights were. She put up her hood and kept waiting in line. Garfield placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, squeezing it to remind her she wasn't alone. They walked out of the small shop contently sipping on their tea.

"We should go to the lab building now," Starfire suggested, "I still have to clean out my glassware from the last time… I think I still have some ethanol in my nose from the last distillation."

"Then let's meet up later," Victor suggested to the group, receiving agreement as they parted ways. Raven and Starfire move across campus and into the tall, clean white lab building by the historic Pimentel hall that doubled as a nuclear weapon lab during World War Two. They took the stairs to the second floor and the level smelled like acetone, sweet but unsettling and something one would not want to eat. They walked into the lab room with four rows of blacktop benches and two wide windows in the back.

"I hope we can leave early," Raven said, pulling her hood down and donning a lab coat after her friend. Her headache hadn't left. Persistent, it was.

"We're only doing acid-base titrations again," Starfire said reassuringly. "It should only take us two and a half hours."

Raven winced at the pounding in her forehead. "Great."

"Hello everyone," the tall, lanky graduate student instructor of their lab section said cheerily, walking past twenty students in goggles and brandishing flasks and test tubes. "Today we're going to discuss column chromatography, this will take all four hours so hold onto your hats!" He let out a geeky chuckle before turning to the whiteboard. "I'll be doing a small demonstration in how to extract your first few compounds, but if you feel confident enough, get started!"

"Oh," Koriand'r turned to her friend who had already set up both column apparati. "Raven?"

"Yeah, I just- I need to finish this as quickly as possible." Raven took out her lab notebook and gestured at Starfire to do the same. Other students seemed a little jealous at the women's efficiency in this task, working in partners to separate column after column. Each compound separation grew harder for Raven as her headache evolved into a splitting migraine after an hour and a half. They still had three compounds left to separate and organize, but Raven's chemical-machine prowess waned. She held the pipette containing an organic solute in one, shaky hand while Starfire prepared the already separated extracts for a purity test on the other side of the room and under a fume hood. She growled in anger and slowly put the full pipette down on the table. Her eyes opened wide and she looked down at the black tabletop, her vision shaking and blurring with every pulse of her rising heartbeat. She leaned forward with her arms, feeling a cold sweat coat her arms and forehead. She swallowed nervously as her knees shook, the sunlight grew unbearable and the sounds of her classmates' reactions bubbling made her want to scream.

"How is it going?" her graduate student instructor said from behind her. She nearly jumped out of her skin. "You two got through all of these pretty fast, and- oh?" The grad student picked up the filled pipette, frowning at the yellowish solvent pouring from the bulb used to push any liquids out. "Rachel, is there a reason why you left this pipette just sitting here?"

Raven could not respond fully. "No," she said softly, fighting the feeling of unspeakable evil surging through her veins. She took the pipette from his hand and shakily aimed it at the column funnel. She squeezed the bulb and let her arm drop as the solute sprayed all over the floor and bench.

"Whoa! Rachel, watch the aim! You'll have to get more reactant- why do we add this catalyst to our synthesis?" the grad student asked.

Raven felt her chest tighten and her body shake against the evil knocking on the door. "I-"

"It's a weak, bulky base, so what would we do afterward?" he asked, receiving a mumbled response. "Rachel? Rachel? Rachel?"

Starfire glanced from her extraction station and almost turned white from the apprehension.

"Rachel? Are you alright? Rachel?" the grad student pestered, rapidly tapping the table. "Rachel? Rachel?"

"She doesn't look okay," one student across the bench said. She hurried over to Rachel's side and attempted to take her by the hand. "Let's take you to the Tang Center, okay?"

The graduate student felt quite embarrassed. He couldn't tell if she looked pale or sick or not at all. He put a hand on her wrist, feeling her heart pound through his hand. "Rachel, you can make up this lab in any other section this week." He nodded to the classmate holding her hand. "Alice, take her home. You can stay after for another hour to finish your column purification."

"Thanks!" Alice said, taking off her goggles and setting them down on the bench. She took off her gloves and reached for Raven's hand again.

Raven closed her eyes for a moment, pleading with her inner demons to stay quiet. She didn't know why they were acting so violently today, but with all the sharp glassware and . She opened her eyes feeling adrenalin surge throughout her whole body and stared into the black bench, seeing four red eyes open and stare back at her.

Starfire dropped her flasks into the fume hood and darted toward Raven as fast as she could. Time seemed to slow around her and she could see her friend clearly, her demonic black aura exploding all around her and throwing the grad student and Alice to the ground. Glassware everywhere in the room popped and shattered and the window panes had been blown out all within an instant. Starfire cried out in a panic at the inability to save everyone, but help had already arrived. Two orange flashes swiped any and all glass flying toward the students, but they were still caught in the black burst of an energy that didn't belong to Rachel. The orange flashes disappeared, more than likely to save the rest of the building. It was just her and Rachel.

Koriand'r wasted no time in charging the demon inhabiting her friend, taking the four-eyed beast behind the head and grabbing a fistful of violet hair. "I have had enough of dealing with you," she said, her green eyes glowing in the cackling beast's red ones. Raven's cheeks spread into a sharp-toothed grin and she whipped Starfire out of the window. She followed Starfire out and doubled up her fists, slamming Starfire into the square brick-tiled courtyard among the four lab buildings. Starfire quickly took off her Berkeley sweatshirt and jeans to reveal her superhero outfit. Raven's black aura spiked and she slowly took her master's Crane stance, balancing on one foot. Starfire ran her thumb across her nose and fell into Vegeta's signature stance, gesturing toward the demon to make its move.

Raven leapt forward, spiraling with a loud screech as it threw a kick at Starfire's face. The Tamaranean ducked and threw an uppercut back. Raven redirected the punch and rolled off her arm, landing in a crouched position to sweep her opponent with a spin kick. Starfire flipped back and landed on her feet, balling up her fists and charging again. Extraterrestrial and supernatural collided in a flurry of green and black energy, proving a worthy and equal match between them. Raven connected with a palm strike in Starfire's stomach and Koriand'r countered by taking Raven by the shoulders, flipping back to body slam her opponent into the ground. She used that opportunity to grapple Rachel into an armbar, but the demon was having none of it. The beast that fought Starfire today was the worst she had ever seen it.

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" the demon shouted, his own deep and rumbling voice fusing with Rachel's shrill cry of terror. Starfire lost her grip and was sent rocketing into the side of their lab building. She looked forward again, seeing the enraged demon fly toward her with a lethal knee strike. She gasped and rolled out of the way, catching the back of Raven's head.

"I apologize, Rachel," she said, slamming Raven's face into the wall. Starfire followed with a rapid series of palm strikes to the demon's back and a green ki flash from her palm that made the beast squeal in pain. "Go down already!" she exclaimed.

Raven whipped around, cracking Starfire's jaw with a left hook that sent her rolling into a small center fountain. She formed the Crane stance again and took off into the air, her signature black Raven symbol morphing into the symbol of her father. Raven put her hands together and aimed them at Starfire. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"

Starfire looked up in fear and braced herself for the impact of the incoming black wave, but the orange flashes were back and they weren't very happy. The black wave was canceled as the duo struck, taking her down with masterful and precise strikes that ended with the demon groaning painfully as it went back to sleep. "Master Yamcha, Master Krillin, I could not stop her on my own."

"Don't worry about it, you did your best," the spiky-haired Arab warrior with a scar down his face said, channeling the chi of the wolf into his palms.

"We just finished a job in Metropolis with Supergirl and her family, it was a bit of a short notice," the short, bald Chinese master of Shaolin kung-fu said, staring down at the four-eyed daughter of darkness. "We should have been here earlier. What happened? The last time it was like this, weren't there tentacles? This thing seemed too good at Tien's style to be what we fought before."

"It evolved, and it's been steadily getting worse over time; we feel something bigger is on its way," Robin said, running into the courtyard with the other three Titans. "Sorry for keeping you waiting."

* * *

 _Later that evening_

Raven woke up in her room again with her fellow Titans standing around her. She sat up immediately, remembering everything she had done. She shot from the bed and wrapped her arms around Starfire. "I am so sorry," she said tearfully, "I couldn't hold it in this time, it's the worst it's ever been, I didn't even know it could use me like that, I-"

"Raven, Raven, it is alright," Starfire said, hugging her back and setting her down on her feet. "Welcome back."

"Take some deep breaths," Robin said, taking her hand and slowly sitting her down. "Everything is going to be alright."

"We do have one question," Cyborg said, "you kept saying 'he is coming' in your sleep. I don't mean to put any pressure on you or anything, but what does that mean?"

Raven leaned forward on her bed, trying to collect her thoughts. "My father," she said, remembering a long-haired man with a sword fighting alongside them in her dreams, "or him. Trunks."

"Trunks?" Garfield said, confused at the connection between the time traveler and the prince of darkness. "What does he have to do with any of this?"

"When my father gets to be as vocal as he was was this afternoon," Raven said, "that means something he doesn't like is coming."

"How do we stop…" Victor tried to phrase this in a way that wouldn't offend her. "How do we stop this from getting worse?"

Raven shot a glare at her friend, although she understood his worry. "We don't, unless my father decides to reveal himself too."

"But what does Trunks have to do with Trigon?" Starfire asked.

"It's not about Trunks," the leader of the Titans said clearly, "it's Gohan. He's coming with a plan to bring him back; I wouldn't be surprised of our guy made a name for himself taking down the Ma-Djinns, but I don't think they're entirely gone either."

Light bulbs clicked around the room. "Then Trunks is merely the catalyst for what's about to happen," Raven said, feeling the pain in her head remind her of another crucial fact, "and we're not gonna like it." Her stomach growled louder than any demon she had faced today. "And another thing, if you ate my California burrito, Gar," she hissed at Beast Boy, "I'll go demonic on you because I want to."

Garfield swallowed nervously. His breath still smelled like fries and sour cream. "I'll see what's in the kitchen."

"Well, you can't stay in here," Victor said, inviting Raven out into the living room. The five made dinner and sat on the couch, watching television like they used to. Raven looked around at her friends, laughing with her like nothing happened that day. She could never forget how grateful she would be for her friends. Their expressions changed at the newscast that interrupted their evening shows.

They watched the live footage of downtown Chicago where seven foot tall gray, featureless musclebound humanoids donning the signal whipped balls of molten lava into police shields. More of these creatures crawled up from the deep split in the ground that took a shape that horrified everyone in the room to their core. Raven looked down at her palms and back at the screen, seeing her father's signal etched in the center of Michigan avenue in fire. The Z-Fighters were already on the scene, with Piccolo, Vegeta, Tien, and Chiaotzu doing most of the work, but the message was forewarning of an even bigger battle they were responsible for.

"Raven," Garfield said in the silent room, turning slowly to her friend with eyes wide in terror. "What does that mean?"

"He's picking a fight," Raven said, feeling pissed off just by looking at it again. "That's confidence, and those _things_ aren't his. Something is helping him." She stood up and walked back into her room, throwing her purple hood over her head. "I need to meditate." She stopped before she went into her room, turning to her friends before fading into the darkness. "Brace yourselves."

 **WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? WILL TRUNKS ARRIVE SOON? WHO IS TRIGON FIGHTING? WILL THE TITANS SURVIVE? REVIEW!**


	3. A Fateful Return

**I DID NOT REALIZE THE TIMESKIP WAS TWO YEARS IN REAL LIFE TOO. THAT'S FUNNY. YOU'RE FUNNY.**

 **I HAVE A GENERAL PLAN BUT I DON'T LIKE THE WAY IT FLOWS AT THE MOMENT. SLOW UPDATES BUT UPDATES ARE COMING.**

 **I WILL FINISH THIS STORY. YOU WILL FINISH THIS STORY.**

* * *

The skies were black, stormy and cloudy, unusually so for the Bay Area this time of year. The Titans sped down Mission Street past the BART train after a long day cramming for finals toward another incident of Trigon's agents. Robin stood up on his motorcycle and punched the acceleration, riding as fast as he could fly toward the center of the city. "Titans, incoming bogeys on our 11," he said, whipping his bike into the gray-skinned mountain humanoids in black wrestling outfits crawling from the deep lava pit summoned in the center of the street. "Teen Titans: Go!"

Starfire and Raven rained hell upon the Ma-Djinn remnants sporting the symbol of Raven's father while Beast Boy and Cyborg ripped through tiny magma sprites up close. Beast Boy morphed into a human-sized Chinese dragon, blowing large gusts of air to cool them down while Cyborg and Robin swept them away. Two faceless gray wrestlers stood on either side of Robin and quickly regretted it, feeling the cold, hard _thwap_ of his favorite bo staff bashing their heads in. Robin stomped forward and channeled white ki through it in a concentrated beam that sliced through them like butter and looked down the pit. His eyes flew open and he leaned back, feeling the heat of the magma as it spat out three fresh gray fighters. Cyborg's hand morphed into a cannon and he fired, blowing holes through the fighters and dropping them back in the pit. Starfire and Raven landed and worked together, Raven gritting her teeth and her eyes glowing white as black energy around her hands closed the magma pit and Starfire blasted the rest of the demons. Beast Boy morphed out of his dragon form and laughed victoriously, flipping off the wall and throwing a few punches. "We did it, guys! Pizza on me?"

"That's not why we're here," Raven said solemnly, pointing down the street to the coastline at an oil rig. Her father's symbol burned brightly on four conical tanks with a familiar villain cackling as he fired rays of heavy photons at the policemen who blocked off the streets.

"Then let's get in there!" Cyborg said, taking off with his improved rocket boots.

"We must end this quickly," Starfire said, "my hair is becoming the stringy."

Robin hopped back on his motorcycle and wheelied forward down the hill. He made it down the street first and jumped, holding the bike as he spun through the air and smacked the scumbag in the face 50 feet in the air. Robin whipped a Robin-rang into his shoulder and followed up with his grappling hook, yanking him back onto the rig. "It's over, Doctor Light," he said, casually dodging the frantic, thrashing rays getting aimed at him. The bad guy's forehead had the insignia carved into it, bleeding profusely. "Heretic or not, you're going to the hospital, then straight to jail."

"How's that for an itinerary?" Beast Boy taunted, giving him a thumbs down.

Doctor Light's eyes widened at Raven's cloaked appearance and his laughing quieted to mute fear. Raven's red eyes revealed herself to him and no one else. "Take him away."

Cyborg hefted the crook onto his shoulders, walking toward the police. "Here he is, officer."

The policemen merely stared past him at the waters and soon the shadows born from the lightning strikes were covered by a black wall. Cyborg threw Light to the ground and turned around, gasping at the tidal wave heading straight toward them. "Robin!" he shouted, holding out his hands and firing out a sonic boom to push a large circle through the water. "Just what in the hell is going on?!" He jumped back on the oil drum and looked out on the coast. Aqualad stood on top of giant squid swiping at a giant magma slug, letting out a battle cry and raising his silver trident against the beast.

"It's an Asakku," Raven said, "one of Trigon's original creations."

"How do we take that down?" Robin asked.

Raven's eyes glowed red and split into four. "Like anything else."

The five Titans fell into stance from their teacher's styles and fired their signature attacks. "Kamehameha!" Robin shouted, hitting the creature with the world-renowned blue wave of death.

"Dodon-pa!" Raven yelled, piercing it with the dense yellow beam invented by the Crane.

"Galick Gun: Fire!" Starfire shouted with the rage of a Saiyan.

Cyborg's sonic cannon morphed into a conical shaped transmitter with a teal wave rapidly firing out of it. "Buster Cannon!"

Beast Boy wiped his nose with his thumb and spiked his green aura. "Come on guys, get serious!" He formed a diamond over his chest with a dark red otherworldly bomb swelling in his hands. "Cherry Bullet!" He fired the red and white spiraling ball and it latched itself onto the slug's side, bursting in an explosion of hot magma into the waters that downed the beast.

Aqualad turned toward the shore as his squid receded into the water. "Thanks for the assist, but I had that!" He flashed his pearly-white smile at Raven, puffing out his chest and majestically whipping his long, black hair back. "Hey, Raven! How are you today?"

"I feel like crushing some demons," Raven said dryly, "don't get caught in the crossfire."

Aqualad's white face filled Garfield with so much joy. "Oh, well, see you later then?"

Raven blushed still, but responded in the only way she could have responded in. "I'd hate nothing more."

Aqualad laughed. "Okay, okay, fine- I'll message you tonight."

"Where did this thing come from?" Robin asked.

"Out of some cave my senior was checking," Aqualad said, "another memory of the whole Ma-Djinn incident, I think, but the symbol on it is different." He saluted the Titans as he sank back into his domain. "Don't worry about the seas," he said, "Atlantis is fully capable of defending itself from whatever may come."

Raven knew it wasn't going to be, but she hoped so anyway. "Let's go," she said, "we have class in ten."

Beast Boy's face slumped toward the ground. "Library until midnight, again?"

"Yeah, I guess," Cyborg said. "I am _not_ excited for our test next week."

"Man, shut up," Garfield said, "the GSI already said you're _pre-listed_ for the dean's list this semester, dude, that means you could fail your finals and still get an A minus in the class."

"Hey!" Victor shouted. " _I_ get to have _my_ problems, okay?"

"Hey guys, guys," Raven said, "maybe you should study how to be quiet. Think of it as training for the library."

The bright, hardwood, multi-level library was not quiet, instead packed with students studying two weeks in advance for their exams like they were tomorrow morning. The Titans sat around a small but reasonable table, each studying as intensely as they fought. Beast Boy and Cyborg argued over a multi-board physics problem while the two girls blazed through long and arduous chemistry problems Robin needed to call Batman to help with when he was a kid. Robin, taking after his mentor and fellow polymath, bounced back and forth while re-reading his political science textbooks. Robin was damn near in every course the rest of the team was enrolled in, always calling that his excuse for not doing as well as Koriand'r or Victor. They started studying earlier and hit the books harder than the rest of the student body before Dead Week, a whole seven days where the campus went silent with faces hitting desks, due to "other obligations." Rachel felt a sharp pain in her hand and she dropped the chalk, leaving a lopsided pentane ring with a foot-long substituent on the corner. Koriand'r picked up the chalk and handed it back, finishing the equation for her. "These 20 problem sets will not finish themselves," she said to her friend, following her eyes to the clock in the back wall of the room. The clock read 11:58. "Two minutes until another milestone of 'the all nighter,' yes?"

"I think we should leave soon," Raven said meekly.

"Yes, we shall continue the studying at Titan Tower soon," the Tamaranean said, glancing back and forth between the board and the door.

"Well," Rachel said, struggling to keep her father from making her slip into the B-plus range. "Let's finish this set again." She noticed Starfire staring at the door and turned around curiously. The boys were gone. "Koriand'r…"

She turned back to the board and gasped, falling back into the leather chairs and looking up at the three devils that surprised her. She looked past the clock, her head pounding as the clock ticked at midnight. "Happy birthday to you," the four Titans sang, holding a green cake slice with a small candle on it and presenting it to her. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Rachel-"

"Shut up!" the students running the front desk shouted.

The four crooners hunched over and whispered the last line of the song. "Happy birthday to you."

Rachel stood up absolutely mortified, shakily receiving the cake and at the clock. "How did you- why-"

"We read your student ID," Garfield winked, waving the fork. "It's matcha flavored, your fav kind of tea."

Rachel turned her head from him, closing her eyes and growing hot, venomous tears that trailed down her face.

The light dimmed from the Titans' faces, as well as the lights around the room in general. She quickly returned the green cake to the green man and gathered her books, storming out of the room rubbing her face. He sighed, but he wasn't upset. The team knew this would happen, but Garfield knew never trying would only make her feel worse. "Let's finish chapter nine at home, yeah?" Garfield said to Vic, hurriedly gathering his belongings and running after her. He rushed outside into the night, looking into the sky and watching her faze out into the night. He ran off campus with the rest of the team racing behind him. He jumped into the air and morphed into a pterodactyl, holding the matcha cake on the plate by his beak. He soared across the bay and banked into Jump City, looking out to Titan Tower. His eyes morphed to those of eagles and he could see her unlock the window, run into the living room and stop cold. Beast Boy flew in behind her and morphed back into his human form. "Eek!" he exclaimed, leaning forward and catching the cake. He flipped on the light switch as the other three Titans rushed into the room from the window, facing a distraught Rachel in a circle of her well-wrapped presents.

Garfield walked up to her carefully, hoping to calm her down. "Rae, is there anything I can-"

"If you knew anything about the day of my birth, you'd know there's nothing to celebrate." Raven brushed past him heavily embarrassed, slamming the door to her room behind her.

The team mulled their disappointment as quietly as they could, retreating to the couch and taking a moment to think on how to approach this further. Garfield looked down at the matcha cake and sighed again, opening his mouth for a bite. His eyes widened as the pastry turned black and raised off the plate, zipping into Rachel's room. He took that as a victory and let a smile overturn his frown for a moment. He leaned back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling, listening to Robin debrief the day's mission.

"H.I.V.E. interference at 10, robbery at noon, Ma-Djinn suppression at three, six, seven, nine," Robin said, his voice empty but well feigned. "Good work, team."

"I would rather get struck by the lightning than fight another magma slug Glorbnoff again," Starfire admitted, looking up like Garfield. Her face twisted into confusion at the sparks generating above her head and she slowly stood up.

"It's just coming outta nowhere," Victor said, taping the phenomenon with his arm camera at an arm's distance.

"I think you might have asked too literally, Star," Garfield said, stepping back as the sparks held as a single glowing ring.

"What on Earth…" Robin reached out to touch the ring but recoiled upon hearing its voice.

"Please do not touch the transmission apparatus," the ring said in a monotonous, 'Siri' tone. "Please stand back." The Titans followed instruction as the ring spread and lowered, just barely grazing the ground. The ring closed in on itself and the room jumped with a flash of bright white and a loud pop.

Raven jumped herself and slowly opened the door, creeping around the corner with a face full of cake to see what would cause the mini-nuclear flash. The light faded to reveal a man, muscular, tan, and of average height, wearing all black with a long, double-tailed and open trench coat, dress shoes, slacks, dress shirt, tie, and sleek sunglasses. Even the sheathe on his back holding his long katana was black, the only splash of color on this man was his medium-length lavender hair and eyebrows. He looked fierce, intimidating, mysterious, yet his presence was relieving. She rushed into the room, facing the man without a shadow pulling out a badge from a thin, black utility belt filled with gadgets not even Cyborg had seen before. "I know it's been awhile," he said with a deep, authoritative voice that would pierce through any conversation. "I was dealing with an alternate version of me that joined the Justice League, the Ma-Djinns were an issue there too, it got messy and I've spent the last month and a half catching up on paperwork-" he smirked. "-when I haven't been pulling the strings for you."

The time traveler took off his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket. He had electric blue eyes and the face of his father, Vegeta. "We started to believe you would not come," Starfire said, her eyes beaming with hope.

"Well, here I am," he said bluntly, pointing to himself. "Do you like the new uniform? All black, very cyber-spy-ish? I could do without the sunglasses, to be honest, but then I lose a little of the 'Morpheus' feel."

"We didn't wait two years to talk about fashion, Trunks," Robin said gravely.

"Ah, yes, well," Trunks said, clearing his throat and gesturing Raven to come inside. "I come bearing good news," he continued, "I have cleared a solo mission for _myself_ , it's two weeks which should be plenty of time to do what we need to do in order to bring our mutual friend back."

The team's faces lit up in excitement, all willing and ready to hear more. The little voice telling Raven it wouldn't matter stayed silent. Robin stayed skeptical. "Yourself?"

"Here's the issue," Trunks said, "I built multiple prototypes of 'Hope' Mark Two specifically for this mission that could carry all six of us and maybe Blackfire, but the results of my optimization led to a maximum wavelength allowance of three people. I can only take two of you for this mission."

The five Titans looked at each other curiously, but they already knew who would demand to go first.

"The other bad news is the energy consumed by our ship is so large that we would need to find a place to stay once my Capsule house allowance runs out," Trunks continued, "and, naturally, risk of death is imminent."

"Death hasn't scared us before," Robin said, "appearing in the grim reaper's clothes won't scare any of us away."

"Alright then," Trunks said, stepping forward with a confident smile and opening his arms. "Who's coming?"

* * *

 **WHICH TWO TITANS WILL JOIN TRUNKS IN REVIVING GOHAN? WHO WILL STAY BEHIND AND DRAW THE LINE IN THE SAND AGAINST TRIGON'S FORCES? QUESTIONS/COMMENTS/CONCERNS? REVIEW!**


	4. Just in Time

**OWN NADA**

 **GUESS ALL THE TIME TRAVELERS**

 **WINNER/S GETS A SPOILER BUT ONLY THROUGH PM**

 **OR A COOKIE IDK**

 **PROBABLY A COOKIE**

 **BUT YOU HAVE TO PLAY TO FIND OUT**

* * *

Four sets of eyes fell upon the Tamaranean redhead, whose fiery green eyes roared in determination. "I must go first! Anything to bring our dearest friend back!"

Everyone would have expected that. "I should go too," Raven said, turning some heads. "Despite my situation, my father is not the best dealing with time since it is outside of his realm."

Robin didn't want to say it, but he figured he would be the only one she would listen to. "Raven, I hate to say it, but until we figure out how to stop Trigon, then we cannot risk you getting stranded in a place where affecting the tiniest event could change the future indefinitely."

Raven felt like blushing or killing Robin, but she begrudgingly agreed. "You- you're right. I'm just worried, that's all. I want Gohan back just as much as you."

"And I'll be right here, Rae; we'll give Trigon a taste of his own medicine if he tries fixing anything else while they're away," Garfield said. "Cy?"

"I need to stay here anyway," Cyborg said, "I don't think my external battery is capable of a two-week discharge, and if things go down at the tower, I gotta keep her up and running."

Trunks opened his hands. "Robin?"

The leader of the Titans looked at Starfire with a small smile from the side of his mouth. "We're ready."

Starfire jumped to her feet. "When do we leave?"

Trunks checked his watch. "In six hours, take what you need for two weeks, but try not to weigh yourself down, in case you need to run."

"Reassuring," Cyborg said.

"What exactly are we searching for?" Robin asked.

The Saiyan took a moment of pause, thinking of the best way to explain this to non-time travelers. "Each person has seven defining moments in their life, each present at seven integral points in time that shapes the course of their destiny until they die- a manifestation of the energy each person spends to diverge their tree of time forms a crystal, known appropriately as Temporalates. They are produced at the moment of divergence, and one of my jobs is to collect these crystals for Otherworld's bookkeeping and to track divergences in the timeline, hence how someone found me changing the past the first time. The older the person is, the larger these Temporalates are; in Gohan's case, they will be a tad smaller than what's expected. I believe I have located where the seven divergences are, thus if we collect them at the points of divergence then bring them to the present, he can be revived using the Dragonballs."

The Titans were floored by the explanation, but Robin still had questions. "But when Buu destroyed Gohan, his existence was completely erased- you're saying that bringing this energy manifestation to the present will reverse that effect?"

"Not exactly," Trunks said, "this is why I've been so secretive about this mission- this is highly illegal and it could land me in some serious trouble, but I owe Gohan my life doubly. This is cheating. We present Shenron with the energy manifestation right until the point of erasure, Shenron brings back his physical form without disturbing his spiritual gains, _but_ the Temporalates from the past are gone, meaning that upon bringing him back, he will need to start over and will have two sets of defining energy manifestations."

The Titans stared at him blankly.

"We can't just go back and redo things without getting stuck in a loop since by bringing the crystals into the present we will erase his timeline after his death- to him, the passage of time won't affect him, and Shenron will grant his revival. He won't know what he missed," Trunks said, "none of us will ever be able to revisit a point in the past centered around him without permanently changing his, and your, timelines while forcing us to relive the same two weeks over and over again."

"Don't screw up," Robin said bluntly, "I like it, now let's get our friend back."

"Perfect, and Raven," Trunks said, offering his hand to the distraught daughter of the devil. "Do not think keeping Trigon in check has gone unnoticed by our organization. Exists out of time, he does, but like everything else, time is the ultimate enemy."

Raven looked at his hand and back up at the time lord. "You have no clue what you're up against."

Trunks retracted his hand, but it wasn't anything personal. "The Kais would disagree, kindly." He stepped into the center of the room. "Meet me on the Salesforce Tower building in San Francisco, midnight, and please be on time, we have a bit to do. See you soon." The same flash of light that brought him here took him out as well, leaving the Titans to themselves in silence.

Robin gestured Starfire over to the hallway leading to their rooms and emerged a few hours later with fully stuffed hiking backpacks. Beast Boy and Raven fell asleep with textbooks over their faces and Cyborg yawned, checking Facebook on the panel on his arm. Cyborg looked up and shook the other two awake. "Friends," Starfire said, hugging each one tightly, "it is now that Robin and I leave with Trunks to bring back our dearest friend, may the next two weeks bode you well!"

"Cyborg," Robin said with a smirk, "hold down the fort."

Cyborg smiled. "Me and Beasty got this."

Raven shrunk into her cloak. "Oh god…"

"Goodbye, for now!" Starfire said, following Robin into the elevator in full heroic gear. The doors closed, leaving the two Titans silent and alone with their own thoughts. Starfire's smiled faded, her hope turning into longing.

"I know you're worried about all of this," he said, "but we need to put our trust in Trunks if we're going to have any hope of bringing Gohan back. He might be just what we've been needing to put this whole Trigon conflict to rest."

"I understand that Trunks is Gohan's companion as well," she said, "but I do not believe that he holds him in the same light as we do… as I do…" She blushed and looked away from her friend, mute. "I know it has been some time since his passing, and Conner has helped me cope for such a long time despite his advances, but if this fails, I do not know what I will do..."

Robin already knew about Superboy's feelings for the Tamaranean, but he valued what she felt far more. "Star," he said, taking a lower, more brotherly and protective tone like the man who taught him, "the only one who can make that decision is you, don't let anyone or anything pressure you into just letting go, because you don't have to." The doors opened and the two Titans looked up, seeing the same sky they shared once as six. "And Star," Robin said, seeing the Trigon emblem take form over San Francisco across the bay. A blue phaser they recognized as being from the Time Traveler and another by the Namekian hit the battalion that surged from the sky gave them hope. "We _will_ bring our friend back."

"Teen Titans: Go!" Cyborg shouted from above, leaping from the window with Raven and Beast Boy in hot pursuit. He looked down. "You guys need to go! We got this!"

"Are you sure you do not require our assistance?" Starfire asked.

"Trigon wants to play?" Beast Boy growled, morphing his head into that of a bear's. "Let's play!"

"I think he's got it!" Raven said.

"See y'all in two weeks," Cyborg said, "we'll try to keep the world from ending!"

Robin and Starfire trailed them for a while, meeting Trunks on the outskirts of the city on the beach. He stood there checking his watch, his pants legs singed from engaging the forces of eternal evil. "There you are," he said, "we don't have time to waste."

"Where's your ship?" Robin asked, landing in the sand next to the anxious Tamaranean.

Trunks took out a pair of sunglasses, calmly putting them on and pointing out toward the ocean. "Cover your eyes."

Robin didn't like misdirection, except when he was using it. "I-" Starfire covered his eyes and hers as a bright flash lit up the beach as if it was day for a split second.

"Here it is," Trunks said.

The Titans uncovered their eyes, staring in awe at a gash through the air itself to what seemed like the backseat of a minivan.

"Meet Hope," Trunks said, stepping inside the split. The Titans carefully stepped inside, looking out the other window into an outlandish void swirling with colors and geometric shapes, some of them they could not comprehend. "Universe 7's first multidimensional, outerdimensional, and extratemporal vehicle, and the first 5th dimensional tesseract-tesseract object in the New 52, as far as we know."

"We're in a _five_ -dimensional object, in a _five_ -dimensional space _and_ time while existing outside of it." Robin, for once, only knew half the words Trunks had said, if that. "My- my head is spinning."

"Have a seat," Trunks said, snapping and closing the portal.

"Where are we?" Starfire asked.

"Universe 7, New 52- what?" Robin asked.

"Ask Barry Allen, when you're ready," Trunks chuckled, "boy wasn't _that_ a disaster," he finished, taking off into the void outside space and time; he seemed to be going straight but their path twisted and turned around the car, and it was a normal-looking car on the inside, even a radio, rearview mirrors, and blinkers. "Strap in."

"Where are we going?" Starfire asked.

Trunks pointed ahead at the floating green, glowing dot suspended in the middle of the medium they traveled through. "The center of nowhere and everywhere. Welcome to Toki Toki City."

Starfire and Robin watched in awe as they passed over a bright, flat plane, displaying a sunny, bustling, sparkling city filled with people from what they believed to be infinite planes, universes, and time, a few of them in the Time Traveler uniform. Trunks dove into the plane and the vehicle tremored greatly. Robin and Starfire held onto the back of the other seats tightly, gasping at the height the city sat on- there was no bottom, the side of the city simply fell off into oblivion, or at least that's what they could comprehend. They entered a stream of other floating cars moving above the crowded sidewalks, but Trunks was above the street rules, yawning as he slipped past car after car on a midair freeway. They passed a bright red vehicle right out of Star Wars driving like an absolute maniac, ramming into others left and right, and the tentacle-headed, green driver was not very happy at the Saiyan interrupting his mobile rampage. They both reached a floating green orb and the vehicles stopped as the irate driver rolled his window to the side. "Hey, bozo! You nearly cut me off, ya purple haired bastard! I got places ta go too!"

Trunks didn't answer, simply waiting for the light to change.

"Hey! Buddy!" he shouted. "I'm talkin ta yoo!"

"You guys like music?" Trunks asked. "There's this really fun song called 'Get Schwifty' from the Earth in Universe 1, it's pretty catchy."

The angry driver whipped open the door and floated outside, knocking on the window. "Say nothin if I can bang your mother! She was probably a slut! I'll beat ya ass in front of her!"

Trunks sighed as the man went on a tirade of insults toward his mother. He reached into a glove compartment in the passenger's side and pulled out a badge, flashing it once. The man's blood ran cold, with his mouth frozen shut. Trunks gestured him back toward his car and sped off as the light changed to red.

"The light's red," Robin said.

"It was green before," Trunks said, driving for another couple minutes in silence as the radio blasted a tale of a man who was trying to "Get Schwifty in here. "Out of all the stations in Toki Toki City, they can't at least have a classic rock station?"

Starfire noted the fear in the angry driver's eyes at the Saiyan as soon as the badge was shown. That was a look of infamy, or awe. "Trunks," she said.

"This song is overrated." Trunks turned down the radio. "Yes?"

They approached a round building that took the shape of a sand timer, and in the center of a courtyard stood a fifteen-foot tall stone statue of the Saiyan wielding his sword alongside a cloaked woman and a man with lightning bolts over his ears. The statue was surrounded by flowers, all of them foreign to the Titans. "Who are you, exactly?" she asked.

Trunks smirked confidently, pulling into a port that acted as a garage of the strange outdoor cul-de-sac complex they stopped in. "During Flashpoint, I devised the mechanism that held our realm together and caught the time bandit who catalyzed the crisis in the first place," he said, "but that's another story."

Robin turned to Starfire, impressed yet confused. "We need to tell Wally."

"Here we are," Trunks said, turning the car off. "Be careful while stepping out."

Robin and Starfire carefully opened their doors. Robin nearly fainted at the sight. "It's like a tesseract," he stuttered, seeing a car-shaped cell at each flat surface of the car and at every corner, then expanding upon itself in the same pattern with each cell being now a tesseract upon itself. It made his head hurt from staring at it."It feels like I'm watching 'Back to the Future' on acid."

"Then don't look at it," Trunks said bluntly, leading them outside and into a small, dome-shaped building that, on the inside, looked surprisingly like any other high security political office building they had seen on Earth. They approached the front desk, feeling a cool gust of air and seeing the bowl of mints on the counter. Behind the men and women working at the front desk was a large, bronze-like clock-ish device that rang at uneven, seemingly random intervals.

"Ah, Trunks!" the tall and spindly pink man with twelve arms said, shaking the Saiyan's hand with one and waving hello with the other 11. "How are you doing?"

"Good to see you, Marvin," Trunks said with a smile, clasping the hand of his friend warmly. "I need to see the Supreme Kai about the new recruits, is she here?"

Marvin stared at the two Titans curiously, each eye staring and moving independently from his fat, pink head. "Ah, yes, on the seventy two-th floor. She's in a meeting with two other Masters right now."

"Perfect," Trunks said, gesturing to his "recruits" to follow. "Thanks!" The Titans followed him into an elevator, with a single, lit knob instead of a button. The doors shut. "Now I want you two to stay quiet, if anyone asks, you were picked up on Earth-16. There are only three people who know of this mission, one of them you've already met."

The doors opened to a bright conference room with white walls, white tables, and a floating blue hologram of a foreign, spherical object containing even more spheres inside it, hosting a panel of men and women of all different species in the Time Traveler uniforms. One man, however, wore a brown suit with a white dress shirt and a red bowtie, sporting a red fez to top it off, spinning a screwdriver-esque device with his fingers. He smiled at Trunks before returning to watch the presentation. A short, petite woman with fuschia skin and short, bright red hair in a bob, pointy ears, and glowing hazel eyes wearing bright purple robes pointed at several spots on the globe, circling them or crossing them out as all the suits scrambled to write them down as she lectured. Trunks and the two recruits slithered into the back of the hall as she stopped. "Any questions as to your assignments?"

Silence. The man in the fez spoke without raising his hand. "What are the rules on human companions coming here again?" he said with a strong, British accent. "My last regeneration didn't outline that very well, his penmanship was a bit… doctorish to say the least, or these new eyes can't read as well." He glanced over at the two pairs of grandfather and grandson, one grandfather burped with the strong stench of alcohol coming from his mouth while the grandson of the other pair twiddled away at an unplugged electric guitar. Both grandfathers had wild, white hair and lab coats, while the grandsons were scrawny with neat brown hair.

The alcoholic glared at the man in the fez. "What, you got a * _buuuuurp_ * problem with me bringing my kid? Did he * _burp_ * ding up your phonebox again? Because it was me!"

The grandson looked nervous, tugging on the grandfather's sleeve. "Rick…"

The other grandfather sighed. "Not again."

"We have a problem with you drinking in zhe lab," a buff cyborg with a buzzcut and glasses said with a thick, Austrian accent, "the rules would have you terminated for that alone." He turned his head in a very inhuman way toward the second family. "And you, Mister Brown, tell your chicken to put his toy away."

Mister Brown's grandson shot a dirty glare up at the cybernetic man. "Nobody," he said in a low voice, his anger rising, "calls me chicken."

Two teenage boys, one with shaggy brown hair and the other with curly dirty blond hair wanted to end the bickering before it began. "Can we all just be excellent to each other?" they said amongst the bickering.

"There shall be no unrest in my hall," the presenter said, her voice radiating power that stiffened every spine in the room. She smiled brightly again. "Good! Dismissed," she said in a bubbly voice. "Remember, return here once your mission is complete, new Travelers!"

The room cleared quickly, except for the presenter and two other Travelers, one they all knew too well. "Trunks!" a voice grating the Tamaranean's ears cried out from across the room, as a tall, voluptuous, raven-haired Tamaranean with bright, purple eyes and creamy orange skin in a black and white suit barreled into the Saiyan, sliding him across the ground and planting a long kiss on his lips. The Saiyan's eyes went wide and starstruck as he played with her hair. She broke the kiss too soon, giggling at his surprise. "Now your life is interesting again."

Trunks rolled her over and stood up, pulling her to her feet. "Oh please, it's not a party unless I'm there, Komand'r."

Blackfire looked up at her sister with her usual half glare, warning her not to talk in front of a certain someone. The second Traveler sauntered over, and he may not have recognized the Boy Wonder, but Robin recognized him: fair, scarred skin, ruffled brown hair, heroic and dashing blue eyes and smolder, muscular build, and two energy pistols with a red and black muscle shirt and hiking pants instead of the standard white and black fatigues that set him apart from everyone else. "Don't expect any of that from me," he said, sounding like a cross between Han Solo and Indiana Jones.

They shook hands, their grips as strong and hardy as they were. "Would never plan that," Trunks said, "good to see the incredible Rip Hunter."

"No need for flattery, you don't miss me that much," he said, eyeing the two Titans up and down. He smirked. "Robin, yes? You've come a long way from Batman's side."

Robin's eyes narrowed as they shook hands. "Yes, I have."

Rip turned to the stunning genius in her own right, then turned to Blackfire. "She's-"

"My sister," she said, just the idea of saying it made her want to hurl. "My personal choice."

Starfire's look of disgust indicated that the feelings were, still, mutual. "Good to keep it in the family," he said, feeling her grip crush his. "Great handshake," he said, moving past them and closing the doors.

Trunks cleared his throat. "Initiates," he said as the pointy-eared woman with a godly aura floated toward the Titans, examining them carefully. "I present to you Lord Chronoa, the Supreme Kai of Time."

Chronoa swirled around the two, inspecting them as if she was performing a physical. "These are the two you selected to help oversee the Universe 7 Trigon situation?"

"There were many strong candidates," Trunks said.

"The restoration of Universe 7's most powerful warrior to the timestream through the Temporalates won't be as easy as you thought when you sent in your latest retrieval mission request," she said. "They are not just lost, as your data found."

Robin rolled his eyes. Was that Trunks' excuse? That someone simply lost an entire individual's timeline? Was this the Time Traveler's equivalent to sleeping on the job?

"Certainly there are trials that will test their ability, but I assure you, they can handle whatever is thrown at them."

"That's not what I mean," she said, her demeanor this grave only in situations far beyond the scope of normality. "Someone is already ahead of you, by three shards," she said, making his nose bleed, "and to make matters worse, it's someone you've fought before. We think it was the same people who led to the Xenoverse crisis of 2015."

Starfire watched the Saiyan set his jaw. This wasn't going to be a cakewalk, she knew that much, but anything that intimidated him wasn't something that could be simply brushed off. "Then we have no time to waste," he said, "do you grant me the clearance to proceed?"

The Kai heeded his warning. "Yes, but remember, as soon as you collect Gohan's shards, you must return them to the vault so Mira & Towa do not get their hands on them ever again. No one may be revived using these shards, or else it may throw the entire continuum out of equilibrium."

"Thank you, Lord Chronoa," Trunks said sincerely.

"What do you mean we cannot use them?" Starfire slipped, receiving another warning glare from her older sister.

"You sure you won't need my assistance?" Rip offered.

Trunks bowed to the Kai and headed back toward the elevator. "No," he said, with Rip, Komand'r and the Titans following him out to the garage, "this is personal."

"But what if the Supreme Kai finds out?" Blackfire asked.

The Titans sat in the back.

"She won't," he said, giving her a parting kiss goodbye. "I'll be back."

He pulled out of the driveway, taking off over the space and into the outerdimensional space before. Robin watched the speedometer as they approached astronomical speeds, but not feeling any of it because of the difference in impact of time here versus in the third dimension. It felt like the car was sitting still. "Who are Mira & Towa?" Robin asked.

What the Titans did notice was the fact that objects around them were moving far faster than before as they entered some form of warp speed. "Time bandits, like Warp," Trunks said, "but with the power to hold their own with the Z-Fighters. I never thought they'd be back so soon."

"Do you think we'll run into them sooner than later?" Starfire asked.

Trunks punched the gear shift, turning everything around the car bright white until they felt the car move again. When they could properly see again, they floated far above the ocean. Trunks pointed toward a tiny island in the middle of nowhere with a pink house that all three of them recognized. "They probably already hit this place up, leave it to a bunch of those people to crash an impromptu funeral. If they're as smart as they used to be, they'll try to stay out of our way."

"Isn't that a bad thing?" Starfire asked.

Trunks gripped both sides of the wheel, veering off toward the mainland plains, where a small, dome-like house in the center of a large radish farm sat peacefully without a care in the world. "I said _try_."


	5. The Clock is Ticking

**I OWN NOTHING**

Trunks slid the car onto the side of the house. Robin and Starfire gawked at the huge plot in the behind the house, seeing row after row of radishes going out of the pink skies on the horizon. "So I take it Gohan's dad was a farmer?"

Trunks smiled. "Best radish farmer on the planet, he actually provided 30 percent of all radishes on the planet."

Robin's brain broke trying to calculate how many radishes could fit on a single farm. "H-how-"

"Shall we introduce ourselves?" Starfire said, stepping out of the car.

"Be careful," Trunks said, "with what just happened to their family, if Gohan went home after it, I'd choose your words carefully."

Starfire and Robin simply walked up to the front door of Gohan's old tiny home, giving the door multiple light taps. They stood for a moment, no response. Starfire raised her hand again, but the door opened to a nervous, beautiful young woman with fair skin, brown eyes, and long, straight black hair that was kept in a bun besides for her bangs and strands framing her face. Starfire stood there stunned for a moment, astonished by how much Gohan resembled the woman in the purple dress at the door. "Wǒ néng bāng nǐ ma?" she said, glancing at the muscular Tamaranean with glowing green eyes and fiery red hair.

Starfire and Robin exchanged glances at each other and Robin leaned back, seeing Trunks working on his car.

"Uhh," Starfire stuttered, trying to remember her Chinese from the last Chinese boy she kissed. "We came from a long journey," she said with a perfect dialect and a wide smile that would brighten up any room, "I am Starfire, my friend is Robin, and our friend at the car is Trunks."

"We need your help, desperately," Robin said pleadingly, having the language beaten into him by his old master. "We're looking for Son Gohan."

The woman's face lost all its color and her fists balled up, her face turning beet red with hot tears running down her face. Starfire's eyes widened and she turned to Robin. "Why would you say that?" she said in English.

Robin kept his stare on the women, his poker face hiding his red-hot embarrassment. "Going around the point of our visit was going to make it worse."

"You already took my husband," the woman in purple growled in English over her cracking voice, "I'm not letting anything _else_ happen to my son!"

Robin and Starfire both put up their hands, showing that the last thing they wanted was violence. "Just let us explain-"

A red aura burst around Gohan's mother and she charged, hitting Robin in the face long before he had the chance to dodge. "Leave us alone!" she screamed, barely missing Starfire with a heel kick that split the ground and shook her own house's foundation. Starfire watched the woman jet toward her in a fury, but the Saiyan intercepted her within an instant.

"Chi-Chi," Trunks said, catching her fist. "I know you're upset about Son Goku, but please, just hear us out."

Chi-Chi's aura faded and she took three deep breaths, staring through all three future warriors as if she was fighting someone who wasn't even there. "Tell me who you are," she demanded.

"We're friends of your family. May we go inside?" Trunks asked. "I'm worried that talking about it out in the open could draw some unwanted attention."

"But Raditz is dead," Chi-Chi said with spite. "You're not telling me another Saiyan came with him?"

"No, no, please, remain calm," Trunks said, "we'll leave our weapons in the car. We just need to talk."

Chi-Chi drew her fist from Trunks' hand. "If I sense anything's amiss, you'll all get it."

"Thank you," Trunks said, stowing his sword into the car. He nodded to Robin to do the same and Robin joined him at the side of the car. Robin pulled off his utility belt and proceeded with a full-on TSA style pat down, even removing hidden weapons in his shoes, socks, pockets, pants, and even a dart gun wrapped on his eyepiece.

Robin noticed Trunks staring in awe at the pile of weapons in the passenger's seat. "What?"

"You have more weapons than some countries have people," Trunks said.

Robin chuckled. "I don't find that necessarily a problem."

"One more question, before I let any of you in, how do you know my son?" Chi-Chi said, her voice ripe with disbelief. "If you all really knew my four year old, for whatever reason, tell me something I'd only tell people I actually cared about."

"You wanted to name him Einstein," Trunks said, "when you were yelling at Goku for wanting to eat before naming him, you mentioned Grandpa Gohan, the name made Gohan laugh- in the end, you, Goku, and your father believed that it was actually Grandpa Gohan who named the boy."

Chi-Chi lowered the banana blade fan she held at the back of the Saiyan's neck, her mouth agape. "And how would you know that?" she said softly, but keeping her stance firm with the fan.

Trunks tapped the top of the car and the two Titans jumped as it vanished in thin air. It wasn't cloaked, but the weight of the car could still be seen pushing down the grass. Trunks turned around, and Chi-Chi seemed to recognize his eyes, but she didn't know from where. "Because he told me."

Chi-Chi backed toward the house. "Come in, sit down."

She welcomed the guests inside, having them sit inside her small, cozy dining room with a wooden table big enough for just four people. A few pictures of the family sat on the wall, one that stood out was a picture of her and her husband, a muscular, fair-skinned man with a bright, simple smile and spiky hair wild all over his head, holding their confused baby with a hat adorned with the four-star Dragonball. "One moment," Trunks said, pulling out a small gray and black cube with a red button and the top.

"What is that?" Robin asked.

"That's an Apokoliptian Boom Tube," Starfire gasped. "Whatever could you be using that for?"

"Just insurance," Trunks said, "Miss Son, you recognized me earlier, but would you like to know from where?"

"I just want to know why you need to find my son," Chi-Chi said bitterly.

Trunks sighed. "Well, I won't put it to you bluntly- we need him, in order to save Earth."

Chi-Chi scoffed. "Yeah, so did that big green jerk."

Robin kept quiet, but at least they knew who he was with.

"What would a four year old be doing trying to save the planet? That's not his responsibility!" Chi-Chi shouted, once again shouting through them at someone who wasn't there.

"Maybe not now, but your son grows up to be one of the universe's most powerful warrior," Starfire says, hoping the truth would serve them well. It only made Chi-Chi angrier.

"Listen here you orange faced harlot!" Chi-Chi snapped, her voice rising into distressed screams. "My son will be a scholar, he'll cure cancer, he'll go to space, he'll play at the National Centre of Performing Arts in Beijing, but he will _not_ end up like his father!" She reached for her fan again, beginning to bawl. "And now there's nothing you'll ever get out of me to tell you where he-"

A bright flash illuminated the room with a camera shutter click and the Titans' eyes were covered. Chi-Chi stared blankly at the three of them. "Who- who are-"

"I'm so sorry you're not interested in our vacuuming services, Miss Son," Trunks said quickly, standing up and shaking her hand, "but if your carpet ever needs a good washing, call us at the number on our business card."

"But I- vacuuming- I-"

Trunks led the Titans out of the house, stuffing the Boom Tube into his pocket. He pulled out a set of keys, revealing his vehicle and herding the Titans inside. Trunks jumped into the front seat and Chi-Chi stepped out of the house, looking lost in Trunks' eyes as he sped off into the sky.

The three sat for a moment in silence, taking in all they caused, and what they tried to solve. Trunks looked in the back seat with a hint of disappointment. "Next time, let me do the talking."

There were some mumbled agreements to that statement. "I did hear that Gohan was with Piccolo," Robin said.

"And I think I know where he is," Starfire said, "although he's changed over time, his ki signature is similar enough."

"Then you lead the way," Trunks said, following her finger out the window and banking a turn left. The car shot through the air, traveling over miles of mainland China until they found themselves sailing over the Gobi Desert.

"We're close," Starfire said.

The skies were darker now, cascading into pink, purple, and cold blue over the horizon as sands turned into plateaus and plains, and with grass came the signs of battle, except this time there was only one warrior. Trunks cloaked the car midair and stopped on a tall plateau with a thick brush, hiding them from the green-skinned nightmare known as Piccolo. "He's so skinny," Robin said, seeing him looming in his turban and white cape over a rosy-cheeked child in a yellow Chinese hanfu with a brown tail staring up nervously at the Namekian. "Is that… Gohan?"

Starfire leaned over Robin's seat, gasping at his cheeks, long black hair, and innocent expression. "His cheeks are so _fat_!" she gasped. "I must take the selfie with him."

Trunks parked on the plateau and the three silently exited the car, observing the lesson from the brush. "If we ever get that close."

"And is that a tail?!" Robin said, shuddering at the thought of their friend with a long, furry, monkey tail. "Does Gohan tuck it in his pants leg?"

"I think it's cute," Starfire giggled.

"Chopped off, gone," Trunks said, "but that's not why we're here."

"What are we looking for?" Robin asked.

"You'll know it when you see it," Trunks said, "but for now, just listen."

Piccolo glared at the young warrior at his feet, bawling about it being too cold. "I don't care if you're cold," Piccolo spat, frightening the child, "there are two Saiyans stronger than the one who killed your father, and dead's worse than being cold!"

Gohan let his head roll back and opened his mouth in a loud cry.

Piccolo grabbed the top of Gohan's head, raising him into the air like a basketball. "If we're going to have any chance at all of living through this, you _will_ show me your full strength like you did against Raditz."

Gohan feebly beat at Piccolo's arm, kicking and screaming. "It hurts! It hurts! Put me down!"

"I'll put you down alright!" Piccolo barked, whipping Gohan headfirst into the small mountain the three time travelers were perched upon. "Show me your strength, or _die!_ "

Robin and Starfire watched on bated breath as the young child sailed for their boulder. "Why would Mister Piccolo do this?" Robin asked.

"Wait," Starfire said, watching his aura burst bright white.

"Get in!" Trunks warned just before Gohan let out a terrified scream. Trunks pulled them back into the car, zooming off the side of the cliff just before it burst into pebbles. Trunks fazed out, leaving the car driverless for a split second and returning with a glowing, white, diamond-shaped crystal. "Got it," he said, waggling it between his fingers before storing it in the glove compartment. The car turned around and the two Titans gawked at the damage.

"That blast alone could wipe out a town!" Robin exclaimed, seeing Piccolo smirking with his arms crossed in approval thus beginning a relationship between the oddest pair of best friends. "If he was this strong as an infant… how much has he been holding back?"

"Did you see the gleam in his chi, just above his forehead, when his aura formed?" Trunks asked.

"That is what we are looking for, then?" Starfire asked.

"Yes," Trunks said, pulling out the white, glowing crystal again and handing it back to Starfire, "this took shorter than I thought it would, so we can go straight on to the next one."

Starfire held the crystal carefully, not feeling a surface nor an edge, but a repulsion that allowed her to hold it with two hands. "They're so small, will we be able to see them every time?"

Trunks shrugged. "I hope so. If not, then we just go back to right before we entered."

"Won't that create a time loop?" Robin asked.

"Yes," Trunks said bluntly, "but it's not going to matter."

"If these time bandits try to steal the crystal here, wouldn't it erase Gohan?" Starfire asked.

"You're forgetting that these crystals don't respect time," Trunks said, "if they want to steal it, they need to go through me first."

"Then you might want to hurry before someone else gets a hold of us first," Robin said, seeing the Namekian sailing toward them with his normal grim determination on his face.

Trunks eased down on the gas pedal, escaping the Namekian just out of his grasp as they sailed through time-space again, undoubtedly leaving one very confused Namekian back in the desert. "Where to next?" Starfire asked.

They exited over similar skies, moving from the desert and back over the plains. Within minutes they reached a dry, hot, windy and rocky area, but the sounds of the winds paled in comparison to the sounds of battle that rattled the windows. "What's happening over there?" Robin asked, watching a purple dot in the distance buzz through the skies pursuing a blue dot.

Trunks looked up in awe. "He never told me this…"

"Told you what?" Starfire asked, hearing Trunks' chuckle.

"He's fighting my father," Trunks said, "we might have already missed our time."

"Vegeta?" Starfire said, making out the spiky black hair her teacher was known for. "Why would Gohan need to fight him?"

They passed over a tall, oblong rocky plateau. Trunks' stare turned cold as he locked eyes with a beautifully sinister and petite woman with blue skin, pointed ears, long, wavy white hair, and purple eyes wearing intricately designed red and black robes that were skin-tight and showed a large portion of her stomach. She wielded a long, brown staff with a golden spike on the end. She smirked at the Saiyan, aiming her staff at Vegeta and zapping him with a foreign purple beam of magic that turned the Saiyan's eyes purple. She blew a kiss at the time-traveler and stepped back, fading into a different dimension. "In a minute he might be fighting us…"

* * *

Cyborg and Beast Boy sat with Raven on the couch, the room silent besides for the tapping of markers on a whiteboard with rows of chemical equations. Raven changed into a pair of black pajama pants and a black tank top, while Beast Boy repped his Cal Soccer tee shirt and gym shorts. Fighting the forces of hell tends to make one's clothes dirty. "So here's what we got for number 17," Cyborg said, scribbling a long problem down on the whiteboard with a blue marker, "six half reactions, only three of them have any reagents present in our final equation, I did number 16's solution last time, so either of y'all wanna take this one?" The clock read 2:55AM. They had 13 problems to go.

Beast Boy was still writing down the problem while Raven wrote the answer down herself in her notebook.

"Rae?" Cyborg said.

A black aura took the pen from Cyborg's hand and scribbled out an answer. She didn't even look as she wrote the answer lopsided and over the question.

"Uh, Rae?" Cyborg repeated, this time she looked up, seeing her error.

Raven raised the eraser and tried to carefully undo her first mistake, instead erasing half the question slowly and squeakily. The eraser dropped to the floor and Raven sighed. "Now I have to get up."

She floated to the board, rewriting the question and the answer. "Oh, however shall you cope?" Beast Boy teased.

"Great, nice job Rae," Cyborg said.

"You too, both of you," Raven said, floating back to the couch.

Beast Boy gasped. "You just complimented us!"

"Positive reinforcement, you know?" Raven said, crossing her legs and staring at Beast Boy with one eyebrow raised. Beast Boy could tell she was trying to be intimidating, but he found it to be cute. "Right before you fail your finals."

"That's the Rae I know and love," Beast Boy chuckled, giving her his wide, heroic smile she despised in this context but adored anytime else.

A knock at the elevator doors alarmed Garfield and Victor, but Raven rushed to the door first. "Who is it?" Beast Boy asked.

Raven opened the doors to a short, Vietnamese man wearing a tee-shirt labeled "Uber-Food" with two bags. "Thank you," Raven said to the man, forcing a small smile on her face and handing him a tip.

The delivery man closed the elevator doors. Raven set down both bags in the table in the middle of the room and the other two Titans circled it carefully like wolves pacing around a sick deer. "Whaddya get?" Garfield asked.

Cyborg peaked in the first bag, seeing three heavenly steaming bowls of pho. He gasped, slowly looking up with a childlike, wondrous grin. "Noooooo!"

Beast Boy pulled out three purple Boba drinks from the bag. "These are… for us?"

Raven silently nodded.

A tear came to Beast Boy's eye. "This is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me, and I want to hug you but you'll probably hit me so I'll hug you anyway."

"No," Raven said, seeing Beast Boy dart around all her spectral walls and embracing her from the front. She sighed with a blush, liking his warm embrace but hating it all the same. "You know I will kill you, right?"

Beast Boy flipped back, finding a special tofu pho and taking in a deep, dreamy inhale. "You've done two nice things for us within the past hour, I'm surprised we're not dead already."

"Can I just do something nice for my friends?" she said with a nervous chuckle.

"Are you a robot?" Beast Boy said, turning to Cyborg who was already prepared with the nitrile glove. "Check her," he said, hearing the ominous glove snap of doom over the black cat clock on the wall chiming in at 3AM on the dot.

"I just want studying to go well," Raven said, staring out the window and seeing her father's red eyes reflecting back into her own from across the Bay, "at least something has to." She continued staring into the spectral reflection, thinking that it would just fade away, like the rest.

It blinked.


	6. Child of Wrath

"Hey!" the young Gohan shouted at the stunned Vegeta, turning into a puppet of the mysterious woman. "Your fight is with me!" He charged the Saiyan prince with a fury the Titans had never seen before, throwing all he had through teary eyes as the Saiyan brushed him off with a knee strike to the stomach. A familiar short and bald monk shot toward him from behind but Vegeta sensed him coming from a mile away, kicking him through a rocky plateau.

"Save it, child," Vegeta said with an ominous laugh, his growing purple aura shocking the three time travelers with his increasing might, "give up now and I might just make you my apprentice."

Gohan wiped his tears away and fell into a stance Starfire recognized as Piccolo's. "You hurt my father, hurt Krillin, and killed my friends," he said bitterly, his anger rising. "I won't let you get away with this!"

"I'll get back to you, insolent brat," he said, staring at Trunks waiting for him on another plateau. "I have more pressing matters, at the moment."

"The jerk, he was," Starfire said, her eyes widening in fear as her master burst toward them with killer intent.

"Who was that woman, Trunks?" Robin asked.

Trunks grimaced at the mentioning of her. "Towa, she and Mira are wanted time bandits, they steal crystals from powerful warriors and revive them, using them as puppets for their own crimes along with changing the past. We need to put Vegeta down, or else Gohan will stop existing and I will have never existed."

"Why would they be after Gohan?" Starfire asked. "If they resurrect him first, I could not even imagine the harm it would cause."

"We need to take them down at all costs," Trunks said, "and believe me, we'll be seeing them again."

The three heroes jumped just before Vegeta destroyed their plateau. The Prince fazed out, throwing a punch at Robin that sent him flying. Robin flipped back, throwing multiple Birdarangs that popped in Vegeta's face as a series of bright flashes. Vegeta dodged a kick and grabbed him by the leg, throwing him into the young boy trying to return to the fight. "Give me a challenge, Time Patrol!" he shouted, his ki exploding and turning the sky dark.

Robin helped Gohan to his feet. Robin saw the rage in the boy's eyes, the pure hatred for the Saiyan prince his onyx eyes showed. He had a rough life too, but fighting for your life at just five was a level of hardship Robin would probably never understand. "Who are you?" Gohan asked, his voice shaking and quiet.

"I'm Robin," he said, "you don't know it now, but you're Earth's strongest fighter."

"That's my dad," Gohan corrected, balling up his fists, "I wanna be strong enough to stop Vegeta!"

"The four of us together can take him," Robin said with a reassuring smile, "then your dad will be safe."

"You mean you're gonna help me and Krillin?" Gohan said with hope.

Robin and Gohan took off after the Saiyan fighting his son and student. "Always," Robin said painfully, watching his friend as a mere child throw himself into the fray.

"Masenko-Ha!" Gohan announced, firing a thick, yellow flash of ki at point blank range. Vegeta's hand shot through the attack and clutched Gohan around the throat.

"No more mercy," he hissed, beginning to squeeze. Gohan beat at Vegeta's arm, his face quickly turning purple. "Now you die." He blocked a kick from Trunks but the angry Tamaranean wasn't about to lose Gohan here.

"Release him, you fiend!" Starfire cried out, hitting him in the eye with a green ki blast that sent him reeling back, holding his face in pain.

"I'll kill all of you!" Vegeta barked, opening one eye and drawing his hands to the side of his face. "Galic Gun: Fire!"

Starfire swept Gohan off his feet, dodging the purple wave. Robin dodged the attack and held his hand over his head, forming a yellow, spiked disc spinning at deadly speeds. "Kienzan!"

Vegeta cursed under his breath and turned the wave toward Robin, swallowing his attack. "Your training won't help you here, human!"

Trunks deflected the wave and cruised in with a knee strike to the chest. "And taking control of my father is only delaying the inevitable, Towa!" He turned Vegeta's cheek blue with a punch that blasted him across the rocky mountains, but the Prince was as resilient as he was prideful with a wide volley of yellow energy waves that forced Gohan and Starfire to backpedal for their lives. Their backs hit another plateau and they jumped, looking down in fear as the plateau was turned into dust. Vegeta appeared in front of them with an evil smirk.

"Surprise!" he exclaimed, opening up his palms to two powerful ki blasts that doubled the young warriors over. He whipped around, spiking his demonically enhanced aura, catching two strikes from Robin and Trunks. "You're outclassed, outdone! This planet will be the seat of my new empire!"

"Not while I'm here!" Gohan shouted, letting out a battle cry only to get slapped away into the dirt. Gohan rolled to his feet and dashed forward, landing a kick that started an ill-fated clash for the young boy.

"How do we beat this guy?" Robin asked, catching his breath. "Everything I've thrown at him hasn't affected him in any way other than tickle him!"

"You said you had contingencies for everything, Robin," Starfire said through hard breaths.

Robin panted, feeling a burning in his ribs unlike he'd ever felt before. "Even you have to admit that the chances of going back in time to fight our overpowered mentors were slim to none."

"We have to allow Gohan to defeat him as he did originally, otherwise he'll keep wearing us out," Trunks said, letting his aura explode with the Super Saiyan transformation, his hair golden and his eyes emerald. "In the meantime, beat my father into submission."

"You really don't like him, do you?" Robin said.

"He's beating children!" Trunks shouted, fazing out and stopping Vegeta cold with a kick to the stomach. He threw Vegeta over his shoulder to the ground and followed with one of his signature attacks. "Finish Buster!" he exclaimed, lighting up the mountain range with a bright explosion that sunk deep into the rock. He looked over at Krillin, watching him take a sparkling blue ball of spiritual energy from a broken man who could barely keep his eyes open.

Robin and Starfire followed up with volleys of their own, bathing the Prince in hot, blinding pain. The screams from the center of the explosion came with a return blast, scattering the three time travelers. Vegeta flew up from the wreckage, seething and huffing through his teeth. "Make sure Gohan's alright, I'll take it from here!" Trunks said, catching a punch and twisting Vegeta's arm in a lock, kicking him back down to the ground.

Starfire and Robin listened to his warning, rushing over to Gohan and peeling him out of the rock. Gohan's bottom lip quivered and angry, hot tears swelled in his eyes, holding the back of his head in pain. Starfire went to comfort him but sadness quickly turned to rage once again, his face turning red and his white chi spiraling around them. "I'm not gonna let him hurt my daddy anymore!" he screamed, pushing through the Titans and sliding in between the father-son battle. He kept screaming, pummeling Vegeta with a mixture of martial prowess and sheer bloodthirst. Gohan crushed Vegeta's nose with a loud pop and fazed out, appearing overhead and placing his hands on his forehead again. "Masenko-"

Vegeta countered in the knick of time, punching Gohan so hard in the stomach he sunk deep into a boulder and fell out with his eyes closed, shaking on his hands and knees. Vegeta kicked Trunks in the face and dropped to the ground, beginning a run of death toward the young warrior. Starfire shared in Gohan's emotions, her eyes glowing green and rushing toward the Saiyan. Vegeta deflected a punch and nailed her in the cheek with an elbow strike. Starfire followed with a kick to the shin and hit his nose again with a cross. Blood sprayed from his nose again, only making the possessed Saiyan laugh. "You fight just like a Saiyan elite, it's almost as if you learned from me, but it's too bad-" He tossed her aside, continuing his run. "-you're wasting so much talent, just to die."

Robin stood in front of Gohan as the poor boy tasted his breakfast for a second time all over the dirt. "Come and get it," Robin said, throwing several smoke bombs and delivering what damage he could before Vegeta tossed him aside too.

"Would ya just throw the damn thing, Krillin?" a gruff voice hiding behind a boulder shouted. "The kid ain't got all day!"

"Alright!" Krillin said, holding the divine attack over his head. "Let's do it!" Vegeta's attention snapped toward the attack as it barreled toward him.

Vegeta whipped around and jumped, the attack just barely missing his thigh as it sailed toward Gohan instead. "Oh Florgnok!" Starfire exclaimed, watching Gohan weakly put up his hands as if he was going to catch it. She darted forward to push him out of the way but stopped cold, watching a white mist over his head take shape and harden into the second white diamond. Gohan grit his teeth and clenched his eyes shut as the bomb hit his hands, flattening him to the rocks as the ball bent his arms, intent on crushing him.

"That's it!" Trunks exclaimed, hearing Gohan let out a roar as he mustered the strength in his tiny body to push the ball away. The diamond completely hardened and Trunks made sure the attack hit its target this time. He delivered a stunning punch to the kidneys, diving out of the way with the attack expanding and absorbing the Prince in crackling light energy that made him scream as if his soul itself was being damaged.

Starfire snatched the crystal while Gohan passed out from the stress, watching the Prince get carried higher and higher into the sky until he was a mere twinkle.

Trunks walked up to the two Titans, reverting to his normal form. "Towa's influence, it's gone."

"Is that her usual trick?" Robin asked, his head pounding from the blows he took.

"I'm afraid so," he said, looking down at the exhausted five year old and joining them in their newfound respect. "However, if this little guy could do all that, then Towa is nothing but a speed bump."

He led them back to the time machine. "Where are we headed next?" Robin asked, barely strapping in before Trunks took off into time itself.

"Planet Namek, for three days," Trunks said, "I'm arriving two days before the event so that I can recharge the ship and we can watch Gohan more closely; if we get the jump on Towa, it would make this mission so much easier."

"What will we observe on Piccolo's home planet?" Starfire asked. "Gohan mentioned a man named Frieza once, during our conversations."

* * *

 _Titans Tower_

The glass blew in. "Garfield get down!" Rachel shouted, tackling him to the floor and holding her hand out to catch as much glass as she could.

Cyborg yelped in pain as a shard cut his forehead. "Really?! 98 percent of me is metal, and _that's_ the part that gets hit!"

"What is it, Rae?" Beast Boy asked in awe and a little fear, watching a hulking, veiny, muscle bound humanoid with black cornrows with coal black skin and four glowing red eyes float in through the window. He grinned a rotted, yellow grin with worms crawling through the holes in his teeth. He popped out jagged claws that were green from infection and caked in brown, dried blood.

"Hey, Sis," he growled with a deep, American accent, "long time no see. You know father's looking for you, right? We're keeping the Z-Fighters busy, just to bring you back. You've stopped responding to our messages, and you wanna know something?" A black energy like Raven's split the floor and dimmed the lights in the room. "It's startin' to piss me off."

"Jared," Raven said, standing up and letting a mixture of her training in the light and her heritage in the dark mix into a grey aura around her. "I won't let him take over my home. Leave now, and I won't have to kill you."

The demon cracked its neck, opening his hands mockingly. "It's already begun, Rachel," he said, "the gates are open, his armies flood the earth, the sea, and the sky, and once you see that it's futile to resist then you'll come around. You are the last gate, and he has the key."

"And this gate will stay closed, forever!" she shouted, pointing her hand at him and spiking a black ball of underworld energy. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"

The bolt shot through his cheek and out his neck. He barely winced. "Oh, sister," he said, darting toward her with incredible speed for his size. "How terribly we missed you."

Cyborg rolled in between them and shot up with an uppercut, feeling the toughness of the demon's skin like thick leather. "You want her? You're gonna have to go through us first!"

Jared slapped Cyborg aside and stepped forward, absorbing several spells and reaching forward, grabbing her by the face. "You must have forgotten who I am," he said, whipping her through the kitchen. He dashed forward and batted the green panther away.

"Wrath!" Raven called out. "I demand you to leave, under the name of the guardian of Earth, Kami!"

"Wrath?" Beast Boy said, morphing into a green grizzly and clawing him in the back of the head.

"Don't make me do this, Rachel," the demon said.

"Your physical form is limited by the fact that you're a slave to yourself!" Raven put her hands in a diamond on her chest. "Ki Blast Cannon!"

Cyborg caught the manifestation as he was launched back, wrenching his back over his knee and whipping him toward the edge of the shattered window. "You've done it now!" Cyborg said, leaping toward him in a spin kick.

"Victor, no!" Raven screamed, watching Wrath laugh and catch Cyborg's leg, taking several cannon shots to the face as he ripped Cyborg's leg clean off with ease.

Victor continued firing, seeming not the slightest bit bothered by it. "Resilient, this one is," Wrath chuckled, "but no longer able to fight me."

"I don't have pain receptors you ass!" Cyborg shouted, throwing his cannon directly in Wrath's face for a similar result.

Wrath leaned out of the way and caught it, twisting and ripping with the ugliness of a thousand splitting electrical wires. Wrath tossed him aside, looking forward and taking a rhino horn to the chest. Jared flipped back and swiped for the ledge, feeling a burning sting in his hand from a green tarantula hawk that left it paralyzed. Beast Boy morphed back into his human form and dashed over to Cyborg. "You okay buddy?"

"Bruh!" Cyborg exclaimed, pointing at his arm and leg. "Raven, who is this guy and what is it with him and the limbs?"

Raven looked at her arms, seeing red and orange symbols in an ancient and demonic tongue spread down her shoulders and to her fingertips. "You need to destroy his physical body now," she said, her voice cracking in growing fear, "I thought I learned enough from Piccolo to handle demons like him, but he's brushed off all of my spells."

"Can't we use the Mafuba?" Beast Boy asked, hearing Wrath punch through the wall to climb up the side.

"No, this is just a physical body, haven't you been listening?" Raven snapped. "The others are coming, we have to hurry!"

Beast Boy was torn between caring for his friends and eliminating the threat ascending the tower. "Alright, alright," he said, "I'll be back, hopefully, just- just stay here." He was kicking himself as he leaped out the window, speeding down the side of the building as a pterodactyl that scooped Wrath off the wall and threw him into the water.

Wrath dragged himself out of the bay, watching Beast Boy land on his feet. "You? Just you?" Jared scoffed. "You're weak!"

Beast Boy felt anger swell up from the bottom of his spine and fell into his teacher's signature stance, making his opponent laugh even more. "You might not find it funny in a second," he said, his white aura contrasting the darkness the demon exuded.

"You're the student of Kami?" Wrath said. "After the Saiyan, this is quite a step down!"

"Your head's up your butt if you think you could take him on," Beast Boy said, "I'll be more than enough for you."

"Light versus dark," Wrath said, "divine versus demonic; we used to fear Kami when he hunted us down, so you can only imagine how excited I am to kill one of his own… then you can be with Terra!"

"Why don't you shut up and fight!" Beast Boy spat, flailing himself at Jared with a flurry of high kicks. He didn't care how he knew, Beast Boy just knew that he was going to leave this thing in a lot of pain. Smelling the rot emanating from him filled him with a spontaneous rage, bringing repressed memories he left behind to the forefront of his mind.

Raven's sibling dodged them all, kicking his shin and bouncing him back with a punch in the face. Beast Boy grit his teeth and shook it off, throwing a jab in his guard. Wrath hopped back and curled into a ball, jutting jagged spines from his back and spinning toward him. "I know what you are," he said, following Beast Boy around the island like a homing missile, "the underdog, the unnoticed, you resort to comedy to hide your insecurities because you're small, sad, and no one takes you seriously because you're not worthy of respect."

"I don't know if you've ever been in a fight before," Beast Boy said, using his long legs to batter his face in high kicks, jump kicks, and spin kicks, "but there isn't this much talking."

Jared stumbled back, wiping the blood from his nose. "Garfield Logan, cured of the life-threatening Sakutia and turning your skin green in return, outcast by everyone except for other freaks like them." He reveled in Beast Boy's face twisting into a wolfish growl.

"Shut up!" Beast Boy barked, dashing forward with a yellow, sparkling ball of ki that ballooned in his head and shined under the stars. "Destructive Wave!"

Jared held one hand out, catching the wave and turning the attack black. "Azarath Metrion-" He took a downward heel strike by surprise, letting the wave sink into his chest and blast him into the corner of the Tower. Beast Boy charged again, but this time the demon was ready. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos: Trigon's Fist!" he shouted, nailing the young man in the face with a right hook so hard the entire island shook. Beast Boy roared in pain, landing in the water with what felt like knives running down his neck and into his chest. He morphed into a green bull shark, sinking into the water and waiting for his eye and the rest of the right side of his face to stop screaming at the rest of his body. He looked out of his good eye, waiting in the water.

A large shadowed peered overhead and the Titan shot up, jumping from the water with his teeth bared and ready to behead his opponent with a single chomp.

"You're not fast enough!" Jared teased, throwing his tree trunk of an arm at the fish only for it to pass right through. He screeched in pain with the sensation of knives stabbing him through his back. He whipped around at the werewolf with ten-inch claws snarling at him, slashing across his face and sinking deep into his jaw.

"How about that?" Beast Boy growled with a voice fitting for his name, skidding back from a punch in the stomach and leaping forward again.

"You're annoying, useless, a _bitch_ to everyone you know, and you know it," he said, "you couldn't even save your foster parents."

Beast Boy felt a sharp pierce at the top of his spine and he let out a loud howl, lunging forward in blind anger and paying for it with an elbow strike to the skull. A kick in the side rolled him on his back and a clawed, moldy black foot stepped on his chest, pinning him to the ground as if he were under a car.

"Your first love, dead, having never truly loved you," he said, making him howl in sadness as he took layers of skin off his leg. Beetles crawled out of the wounds, crawling into the holes put in his back, "your second one…" He gasped, looking back up at the Tower and back down, laughing with such a mocking, infuriating voice that turned Garfield's ears red hot. "...you won't be able to save! You are a failure, and you will die having saved no one!"

Beast Boy's human voice was lost to the animal within with his feral scream, throwing him to the ground and rolling to his feet. He morphed back into a human, standing across from the embodiment of everything he was hiding.

"So much rage!" Jared laughed, charging forward with two of Trigon's Fists at the ready. "You could become an agent of mine, after this is all over."

Beast Boy stood there silent, huffing with his fists balled up and his white aura exploding.

"Well?" Jared taunted. "Have you nothing else to say?"

Beast Boy caught one of the strikes with an inhuman ease, his hand apelike with dark green claws. "I'm going to kill you."

Beast Boy's other fist met his, shattering through his black shield and sinking through his hand and into his arm. Beast Boy pulled out and clocked him in the face, feeling multiple snaps as he followed through the jaw. Black blood poured from the demon's mouth, rendering him incapable to taunt him anymore.

Garfield whipped him into the air, staring straight at his target as two spiraling yellow orbs of chi swelled over his hands. He grew six more arms, turning all eight into octopus tentacles and quadrupling his output. "Scatter Shot!" he announced, whipping hundreds of the basketball-sized spheres into the air around his opponent. He closed his fist, halting them in midair in a shining field of death. "Nowhere for you to run!" he shouted, watching Wrath look around him desperate for a way out. "This is the end!"

"BB?" Cyborg said in astonishment and a twinge of fear, watching his laidback, forgiving friend execute the demon in a bright, fiery explosion that blinded anyone watching in a ten-mile radius. He finished soldering his leg back on and turned to Raven, watching her cast spells on the inscriptions placed on her in despair.

"Is he okay?" Raven asked pressingly, "what of Wrath?"

Cyborg looked at her with the same shock in his face he had when the event happened. "You said destroy the physical body," he said, "Garfield went a little bit overboard. I'm going to see if he's alright." He jumped out of the window, landing in the center of black, moldy splotches and running to the edge of the island. Beast Boy sat looking at his black eye in the reflection of the water, trying to make everything that pushed him over the edge float away. He saw Cyborg's reflection in the water and felt a small comfort, but Wrath's voice was louder after death. "Hey BB, what hap-"

"I could have saved Terra," Beast Boy said, his voice broken and soft unlike Cyborg had heard before, "right?"

Cyborg wasn't sure which answer was worse. "No, no one could have."

"Slade poisoning her mind, turning her over to the Ma-Djinns as a puppet," Beast Boy said solemnly, "we were watching her the whole time too, and if I had just listened to you then maybe I could have stopped her from walking away."

Cyborg had an idea of why the demon was called Wrath. "What Terra did was a conscious decision," he said, sternly but with concern, "she chose to learn under Slade even after we gave her a way out, she chose to accept the Ma-Djinn curse, she had every opportunity to stop and return to the light, but she continued down her path knowing the outcome."

Beast Boy continued looking down at the water, seeing a ripple distort his face. "That night that she and I left for a 'recon mission,' while you guys were fighting for your lives," he said, kicking through the reflection. "It wasn't a mission."

Cyborg was silent, his mouth slightly agape and his eyes full of sorrow for his best friend and brother in arms.

"We went everywhere," Beast Boy said, "half the night, wasted away feeling normal." A tear strolled down from his black eye. "I didn't feel ostracized, alone, unaccepted, _different_ in the outside world. She was the only one who I thought saw me as something no one else did." A half grin flashed on his face and the ripples returned over his reflection. "We were on the Ferris Wheel that night," he said, "I thought we were ambushed by Slade then, and continued thinking so for my own peace of mind until just a couple months ago."

Cyborg put his hand on his shoulder.

"I fought for her like a dog while she watched me get beat," he said with a bitter grit. "I felt hurt, betrayed, worthless, but I wanted to believe so bad that it was him, not her, that I let her hurt you, my friends, and ultimately herself in the end." The half smile returned, this time with a dry, dead chuckle. "I guess I answered my own question. I'm really as dumb as the rest of you think I am, right?" The smile faded, turning into hot, bubbling anger that he swallowed with a single manifest. "Cyborg, it was my fault, I was the weak one, the disrespected, the fool, the _expendable_ ," he said venomously, "but not now, never again."

Garfield wiped some of Wrath's remains from his face. Cyborg saw the chewed nails and picked skin from his friend's hands.

"Yeah, I know," he said, "you don't need to worry about it." Beast Boy brushed Cyborg's hand off his shoulder, quietly floating toward the tower.

Cyborg followed him, wondering what else he'd been bottling up. "Gar," he said, "we don't have to talk about it now if you don't want to, but just listen for a sec."

Garfield looked back, showing a face Cyborg had never seen before. So much insecurity. So much sorrow. So much hate.

"I know that dude down there was messing with your mind," he said, "making you think some pretty messed up things about yourself and the rest of us, screwing with your mind, but none of us see you like you think we see you."

"Raven hits me if I talk to her too long," Beast Boy spat.

"She thinks you're the best partner to have in a fight," Cyborg said, "and she thinks you're funny."

"Robin doesn't let me strategize or lead the team."

"And when he screws up?"

"No one takes me seriously," he said, turning away, "even you."

"I'm your best friend," Cyborg reassured him, "and if none of us took you seriously, you wouldn't be on the team."

"Then act like it," Beast Boy warned him coldly, entering the window. He shot a glare at Raven, a look of rage in his eyes the demon knew all too well.

"Beast Boy," Raven said, "whatever Wrath made you think, say, or do, it was all just to make you lose focus of the fight. I never expected you would be able to-"

"Win?" Beast Boy sniped. "Yeah, you and everybody else."

Raven's unfeeling, cold heart she fought to keep that way twinged a little. "Do you… want to talk about it?"

The words swelled up in his throat, and he kept his mouth shut to keep them down. He used comedy for a reason, but the longer he stared at her the harder it was to bottle it up. "I don't care what you think of me, annoying, idiotic, childish" he said, balling up his fists and stomping. "Okay, I do care, a lot," he bit his tongue, wanting to kick himself harder than Wrath did to him earlier, "what I'm saying is that your father can take you only when I'm dead."

Raven watched him trudge to his room in stunned silence, cringing as he slammed the door. Cyborg sat down next to her, just as surprised by the reversal of character as she was. "So," Cyborg said, "who was he, and what did he do to Beast Boy?"

Raven slumped forward, hugging her knees with her arms. "He's my brother, Wrath. He knows all your insecurities, your anxieties, and your fears, all to humiliate you while he kills you. Beast Boy's the only one I know who overwhelmed him after that much exposure. His presence, naturally, increasing the urge to kill. What Jared said might not have been real, but what Beast Boy felt was."

"What does that mean, Raven?" Cyborg said, the realization hitting him like a sandbag. "You're not telling me he's one of the Seven Deadly Sins, are you?"

Raven nodded reluctantly. "If he's here, then the other five are here as well, that explains why my attacks were useless against him."

"Are those what the tattoos indicate?" Victor asked.

"They neutralize my spells from our realm," she said, "my father had these runes placed on me in case I defected, so that my brothers could find me and bring me to him without a fight."

"Then I guess they'll just keep coming until one of them succeeds," Cyborg said.

"We have to find them and take them out," Raven said, "if my father decides to come sooner, he can use any one of his sons as the gate."

The idea of "sooner" put a gray hair on his bald head. One of his sons acting as a messenger was enough of a reminder that they were living on borrowed time. "Then, why you?"

"Grezethoth, Nosferath, Malzus!" she chanted, the searing heat on her skin cutting her spell short. She cursed under her breath. "I'm the original deadly sin, Trigon coming through me means he gets to bring every legion, every demon, general, and prince of ever plane of Hell with him."

"The original deadly sin," Cyborg said softly, already feeling overrun. "Who… are you?"

"I'm Pride," Raven said flatly, putting it all on the table. "My father thought I was going to be the one, and I thought by escaping his grasp I could leave my role in the end behind." She turned to Cyborg, her eyes wide and glossy with tears. "I'm so sorry for this, for everything."

Cyborg put his arm around her, pulling her in close. "You have nothing to apologize for. We're going to send Trigon back to the hole he came from, and afterwards we're going to get some pizza. You heard Gar, we're going to see this through." Raven found his smile comforting. "Okay?"

Beast Boy stomped back out of the room with his finger up in the air. "And another thing, I never get to decide what kind of pizza we get, so what if we never get Tofu and vegan cheese on a full pizza, maybe you guys would like it!"

Cyborg and Raven sat again in stunned silence, wide eyed and apprehensive for what he was about to say next. "Uh, Rae?"

"Wrath's effects are wearing off," Raven said, one of her tears from earlier strolling down her cheek, "he won't even remember anything after it completely goes away."

"In the meantime," Cyborg said, "how do we find the rest of your brothers?"

Raven stood up, pacing the room biting at her nails. "Trigon likes to keep his gates hidden, to strike without warning or probable cause, this keeps his gates from being found."

Cyborg leaned against the wall, folding his arms. "Well, that makes our job interesting; if I had a DNA sample-"

"You wouldn't be able to link it to the others," Raven said, "these are the spawn of Trigon, all with different mothers. Each of them has a full name, and some of them might be walking among us at this very moment."

"Wrath did say while I pounded him into the dirt that they feared Kami," Beast Boy said, "Piccolo would know where to find them since their ki signature shouldn't change."

"No, that's a great idea," Raven said, "if he can link that signature to us, we can find them one after the other. Where is he now?"

Cyborg opened a holographic map on his arm, tapping a Piccolo sprite at the bottom of the screen. The map left the cluster of three circles in California all the way to a yellow dot in Asia. "A mountain range near Tibet, Wrath also said he had guys keeping the Z-Fighters busy, but if Gar said that Kami used to hunt them, I'd say he's meditating."

"Then we need to find him, ASAP," Raven said, wiping the tears from her face. "Beast Boy, do you want to come?"

Beast Boy stomped up to her, feeling the effects of Wrath pinpoint on the tears and pushing him into a tight embrace. Raven no longer felt anger from him at anything anymore, just sadness, but still, this didn't burst her bubble, it teared it to shreds. "Don't cry."

Cyborg's jaw hit the floor at the act Beast Boy had just committed, under the influence of a demon or not.

Raven's face turned beet red and her hands turned black with spell energy. "Garfield?"

Beast Boy shook his head, looking at Cyborg and the broken glass curiously. "Uh, hey Cy?" he said, his voice returning to what it was before.

"Yes?" Cyborg said slowly.

"W-what am I doing?" He looked down over her shoulder, seeing him wrapped tightly around Raven's body. His face turned white with fear and he screamed, reeling back and climbing up the wall like a cat. "Raven?! I don't- I can't-" He melted onto the couch, flinching for the always expected demon punch. "Sorry," he said in a drawn out, apologetic tone.

Raven's eyes burned red with an anger all her own. "Do not do that again," she hissed, turning toward the window, "and treat your eye before you go, don't get it infected."

Beast Boy blinked with his good eye. "Go where?"

"Just get it cleaned," Raven snapped, "we need to hurry."

Garfield figured she'd clue him in on the way and ran toward the bathroom.

"And Garfield," she said, seeing him run around the corner. "You are smart, mature, and only moderately annoying."

Cyborg slapped himself.

The sink stopped and Beast Boy slowly leaned back with a terribly confused expression. "I- I'm sorry, could you say that again?"

Raven turned away again, putting her hood over her head to hide her blush. "No."

"I had the sink faucet running!" he said. "Is this about where we're going?"

Raven rolled her eyes. "Just hurry up."

* * *

 **RAGE ALL AROUND! WHAT LIES IN STORE FOR THE TIME TRAVELERS ON PLANET NAMEK? WHO, WHAT, AND WHERE ARE THE OTHER 5 DEADLY SINS? WILL PICCOLO BE ABLE TO HELP THEM?**


	7. Hostile Reunion

**HEY EVERYONE**

 **I'M BAAAAAAAACK**

* * *

"Damn it," Trunks said, banging the dashboard of his Time Machine as they exited over a dying planet. "It looks like you guys won't have any time to rest after all- I don't have enough fuel to give us the two extra days."

Robin looked out of the window, seeing lava geysers erupting left and right and spilling into the green oceans, turning them into steam. "How are we supposed to leave, then?"

"I have enough power for one sizable jump after we fetch this Time Crystal," Trunks said, "by that time, my mother should have invented the Time Machine, and I would have been there to help them save the world. We'll get plenty of fuel there."

Starfire gasped in horror at the destruction, seeing thin, blue trees get swallowed up into the Earth. "What happened here?" she asked.

Trunks sighed. "Gohan told you about his fight against Frieza, yes?"

Robin's eyes widened. "This is Namek?"

The planet was destroying itself, the skies black and red with small stone villages below burning to ashes. The rocky plateaus sat ablaze, some cracking and shifting from the earthquakes rocking the planet. "Yeah," Trunks said, "things got pretty intense between Frieza and Gohan's dad."

"Intense is an understatement," Starfire said, seeing two trails of pink energy racing toward a white glow on the other side of the planet. "I'm afraid this planet does not have very long."

"There's Mira and Towa!" Robin exclaimed, pointing at the twin pink streaks.

Trunks noticed the pink streaks as well and punched the gas, zooming toward them and leaning out the window. "I see them," he said through gritted teeth. "Robin, take the wheel, you two don't stop until you see Gohan and you grab that Time Crystal. Remember, we need all seven to trick Shenron into wishing him back."

"Don't take them on alone," Starfire said.

"I'm not bargaining with you," Trunks said, diving out of the driver window and stopping the bandits cold. "Mira, Towa! We have some unfinished business!"

"Can you come back later?" Towa asked him with a devious smirk, firing her staff at a dead body wearing armor similar to Vegeta's. "I'm _busy_!"

Mira let out a battle roar and charged the Saiyan head on. Trunks looked back and felt his face go white as the body rose from his shallow, unmarked graves and followed the car. "Come on, Saiyan!" Mira bellowed, blowing him across the thundering sky with a punch. "Your fight is right here!"

Robin and Starfire watched the yellow light of hope take on the pink rays of destruction with a fight more vicious than they had seen before, but their attention was soon cut with a rumbling blast to the back of the machine. Robin looked in the rearview mirror, seeing one soldier that was fair-skinned with short, red hair and glowing with purple ki like the one that surrounded Vegeta on Earth. "We need to move faster," Robin said, wavering his hand over the immensely complicated panel of buttons. He tapped a shining blue one and he was flattened to his seat with Starfire's screams, sailing over the epicenter of the destruction. A young Gohan with a bowl cut and wearing Saiyan armor was on his knees next to a fallen Piccolo, cradling his head in fear as a fair skinned man of average height and spiky, wild, unkempt black hair all over his head and covered in bloody scratches and bruises heaved angrily at the base of a partially destroyed plateau. The warrior wore a tattered version of the orange and blue gi that had been destroyed in the fight with the short, skinny, white and purple alien with glowing red eyes and a long, white tail standing on the plateau with sprinkling ash falling from the sky all around him.

"Who is that?!" Starfire said, feeling the warrior's power rising with every passing moment. Another jarring rock of the time machine forced them to look behind again, seeing the hypnotized opponent closing in on them even with the increased speed.

"It doesn't matter right now," Robin said, parking it hard behind a plateau and rolling out of the car to land on bending blue grass. "We just have to keep an eye on Gohan, grab the crystal, and get out of here!"

"Not on our watch!" a deep, Russian-like accent bellowed from the sky. The plateau shattered before them from a blast of purple chi and the mountainous warrior that had been trailing them landed in front of them in an outlandish pose. "I'm going to win, Ginyu Force or not!"

He ran several super fast laps around them, stopping next to his partner. "The name's _Recoome!_ It rhymes _with doom!_ And you're gonna be hurtin' _all… too… SOON!_ "

The warrior at the base of the plateau let out a loud scream that stunned the planet, drawing everyone's attention toward it. Starfire gasped at the familiar yellow glow surrounding him, his hair standing up on golden ends with sparkling, emerald eyes that struck fear into the heart of the creature looking down at him from the plateau. "Son Goku?"

"I'll never forgive you, _FRIEZA!_ " Goku exploded, rocking the planet with his raw power.

Gohan looked up in awe and a little fear at his father's transformation, feeling comforted yet intimidated all the same. "D-daddy?!"

From the transformation, Robin noticed the tiny, white glint over Gohan's head and he whipped several Robin-rangs at Recoome's face, making a run for it as Towa dived for it as well overhead. Recoome went to lunge after him, but Starfire's strong grip pulled him back. "Your opponent is me!" she said, knowing she couldn't take him on.

"Then I'll stomp you out in an instant," Recoome said, turning toward her and kicking her into the side of the car. Recoome chuckled seeing her crumple against the car door, but he didn't find it funny when she stood up, spitting into the grass and let out a battle cry. "She's got spunk!"

Robin heard Starfire's clashes of battle behind him and watched Goku and Frieza disappear, shaking the planet from their stunning strikes. "She's got a little more than that, you'll see!" Robin shouted, swiping the crystal just before Towa could and pocketing it. He used his momentum to flip into a drop kick that drew blood from her forehead.

"Wait a minute," Gohan said, "I remember you guys, what are you doing-"

"Get out of here!" Robin shouted, looking back up and staring directly into a pink ki blast that rocketed him into Recoome. Robin and Recoome stood up, seeing Towa brandishing her staff and charging another energy wave. A yellow bolt crashed into her instead followed by Mira, allowing Trunks to save them in the knick of time. "I got it, Trunks!"

"Good, now get back to the ship!" Trunks shouted, turning the grass into ash as the bandits dodged his yellow bolts of Saiyan energy.

"Don't let them get away!" Towa barked, making Recoome crack his knuckles.

Recoome stood in front of the car with a smirk, wagging his finger. He was a block of pure muscle, with a broad chest and arms as thick as tree trunks, spiking his purple aura with another silly pose and a clap. "I'm gonna make you guys into my new gloves!" Recoome roared, rushing forward with great speed for his size and smacking them into the air. "Eraser Gun!" he shouted, firing a pink, wide wave of chi from his mouth. Robin dodged but Starfire could not, crossing her arms to block the attack and whimpering in pain as it burned her arms.

"Starfire!" Robin screamed, turning toward Recoome in rage and rushing down to him. A green glow shot through the attack and Starfire followed, meeting Recoome head on.

Recoome chuckled at his young opponents, swatting them away like flies. "You do well!" he laughed. "You do-" Starfire's Tamaranean wrath swelled in her fist and crashed into Recoome's stomach, doubling him over. "- _oh no_ ," he grunted, getting swept to the ground by Robin.

"Let's get to the car, hurry!" Robin said, seeing the monster before them slowly rise unscathed.

"You're not going anywhere!" Recoome said, kicking him in the side of the head.

Robin bounced back from the power, feeling dizzy and weak from the swelling pain in his temple. He never felt a kick that hard in his life, and if he didn't end this quickly, he feared he wouldn't get another opportunity. "Kame…" he said, drawing his hands to his side while Recoome charged. "Hame…" he continued with worry, fueling as much chi as he could. "Ha!" he barked, letting forth a small but strong wave that took Recoome both hands to hold back.

"Really? Is that all?" Recoome taunted, taking in a deep breath. "I'll show you how it's done! Eraser-"

"Galick Gun: Fire!" Starfire shouted, blasting Recoome headfirst into the last broken plateau from the world-ending fights raging above them. "That should hold him for now, we need to find Trunks and get out of here!"

The two Titans scurried into the Time Machine and took off, trailing the yellow bolt of chi barely holding onto the two pink demon streaks through the sky. "Come and catch me, Time Patrol!" Towa taunted, opening a portal into a black void and slipping into it with Mira just out of Trunks' grasp.

"Damn it, lost them again!" Trunks cursed, sliding into the Time Machine and punching in some coordinates before climbing into the back. "Roll the windows up and punch it," he said as the planet started to glow a dangerous white with fountains of lava spouting dangerously fast. "The planet's going to bust," Trunks said as Robin slammed on the gas. "We're going to cut it close!" he shouted, screaming with the two Titans as the planet exploded around them, the back of the car shaking and rattling from the force and the fires just touching the back of the machine as it slipped through a wormhole to their next point in time.

"What could be any worse than that?" Robin said with a terrified expression. "An entire planet just died, Gohan failed to tell us that."

"Cell," Trunks said bluntly, cutting it short. "Cell is much worse. You'll be seeing him soon."

Starfire glared at the side of Robin's head. "You had to ask."

* * *

Raven, Beast Boy, and Cyborg stood at the entrance to a condemned, ugly, brown apartment building in downtown Gotham covered by rolling black clouds on a cold, stormy night. "Are you sure this is where Piccolo wanted us to go?" Beast Boy asked.

"Yeah, don't you sense the dark energy inside?" Raven said, opening the doors.

"If we could move along," Cyborg said, "The hoodie can only protect me from so much water, you know, _cyborg_ and everything."

The smell of years old mold smacked them in the face as they walked into the small lobby with gray mailboxes on one rotting wall and a green carpet staircase leading up. "Somebody get a can of air freshener or two, this alone is enough to scare me away!" Garfield said, using his shirt to cover his nose as they walked up the stairs. The smell of mold was soon replaced by another musty, piercing smell that stuck to their clothes and made Raven dizzy just walking up the next flight.

"It smells like the dorms on April 20th," Cyborg said through grit teeth, trying to hold his breath with the contact high hitting them all like a truck.

"Oh _god_ …" Raven said in disgust, stopping in front of a creaking, half open apartment door fuming with the dank smelling gas. She knocked on the door, hearing a put upon groan from the inside.

"Like, don't make me get it, man," the surfer voice of a young man whined. "It's open!"

"Jack," Raven said, turning to her friends before they went in. "Sloth," she mouthed, pushing open the door and stepping into the haze. Chill, lo-fi music played from a plugged in smartphone in the corner of the empty living room with only a tattered leather couch opposite a television blasting _The Walking Dead_. There was no decor to the room at all, the yellowish walls and moldy kitchen behind the three Titans letting them know that Jack was a very low maintenance person, that or just lazy. Given his sin, Cyborg agreed with the latter. "It's me, Raven."

The boys turned to the skinny, tall, pale-skinned man slumped onto the couch holding a bong in one hand and a bowl of popcorn sitting next to him. "Oh, hey, Rae! You here about dad coming back and all?"

Beast Boy noticed his ragged, shaggy look, his dirty, browning clothes, the carefree and empty gray eyes and frail frame. He didn't look a day over 25 and a pound over 120, but Garfield would keep his distance. "Yes, actually," Raven said, "if Trigon comes back, everything you're watching right now will be gone. We need you to come with us."

Jack yawned, turning back to the TV and blowing out a puff of smoke. "No can do," the baked demon with bloodshot eyes and a generally pleased expression said, "I got a vibe right here that I'm riding out, you guys can join me if you want. The green dude looks like he's pretty chill."

"You don't even have to move," Raven said, "I'm not going to let Trigon come back, if that means destroying you then it's what I'll just have to do."

"Whoa, whoa, just take it easy man," Sloth said with a chuckle. "Sit down, relax for a bit, what you guys are doing, it's just too much work."

Beast Boy yawned, feeling woozy and dizzy from a sudden wave of dark energy along with the strange and sharp euphoria from the weed. "Raven, maybe he's right?"

"If Trigon comes back, he takes everything out, big if true," Sloth said, "but like, then we won't have to do anything, ever again. Ultimate bliss, sis."

"Maybe you won't have to do anything," Raven said, spiking black energy on her hands.

"Chill out, Rae," Beast Boy said tiredly, falling onto the couch.

"Beast Boy, no!" Cyborg said, watching purple spectral chains bind Garfield to the couch and force him to drift into a lazy sleep. "It looks like it's just me and you, Raven."

"Come on," Sloth said, patting the seat next to Beast Boy with a devious yet tired grin. "Plenty of room!"

Cyborg opened his arm cannon, aiming it right at Jack's face with a grimace. "Yeah, and there's about to be even more room in a second."

Jack didn't look threatened. "It appears we've reached an impasse, my dude," he said, "but if you guys leave, we'll both be happy. Neither of us will have to do anything."

"We already told you that's not going to happen," Raven said, "we're not going to let our world _die_ because you're too lazy to get off the couch!"

"I can get off any time I want," Sloth said, waving them away, "just, uh, just, not now-"

"Enough of this," Cyborg said, grabbing his arm and pulling him from the couch. "We're wasting time. We have a couch back at the Tower any-" Cyborg roared in sudden pain and looked down at his hand, finding it no longer there. He looked at Sloth's arm in horror, seeing his rusting hand degrading and cracking away around it.

Jack looked at his arm as well with an upturned frown, his long hair raising on its end with a black aura crackling around him. "Not cool, bro," he said, aiming his hand at them with a green energy that stunk of rot. " _Not. Cool._ "

Raven tackled Cyborg as the green blast passed over them, eating away at the wall with decay faster than years of neglect ever could.

"Just lay off me, bro!" Jack shouted. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"

Raven felt a sharp pain travel up her legs and through her arms, pinning her to the ground. A euphoric state washed over her and her aura changed to green, followed by silly giggling. "Oh hey, Cyborg! Whatcha doin' here?"

"Oh, not you too!" Cyborg said, rolling to his feet and prepping his arm cannon.

"Don't be like that, Cy," she said with red, puffy eyes. Her hair started to turn gray and her skin wrinkly, aging at a harmful and deadly rate. "Chillax a lil', dude, you look like you need to take a breather from your arm bein' off and all."

"You should listen to her, dude," Jack said with a smirk, rushing toward him in an unexpected burst of speed. "You're gonna want to lay down in a minute!"

"I only need one arm to put you down!" Cyborg said, landing an uppercut on his bony chin that sent him right through the ceiling. Cyborg jumped through it, stomping on roaches left and right in another neglected apartment infested with them. Cyborg rolled out of another decaying shot and hit him with a chair, slamming him through the wall and into a bathroom. The back of Jack's head cracked a mirror and he dodged a punch, smashing Cyborg's face into the shards.

"Darkness take you," he cursed, whipping Cyborg back into the living room. Several shots rusted one foot over and a second grazed his shoulder, turning that entire streak reddish brown. Cyborg rolled to his feet anyway and dashed forward on one foot, grabbing the top of his head and cracking his jaw with a jumping knee strike.

Jack grunted in pain and punched him in the stomach, slamming him across the room and into the corner. He darted after him, putting both of his hands on Cyborg's chest.

"It's over now, bro!" Jack chuckled, rusting and degrading the entire chestplate until it sloughed off, revealing the wiring underneath.

"For you!" Cyborg corrected, putting his cannon in Jack's stomach and firing without a second thought. Jack flew across the room and crumpled to the floor with inhuman screeches in agony, flaking away into dust and fading away with the draft from the cracked window. Cyborg felt drained and taking another step broke his foot off entirely, making him hit the ground hard.

"Where is he?" Beast Boy shouted angrily, hopping into the apartment with Raven, both young and energetic again.

"Gone," Cyborg said with a wince, sitting up and trying to rotate his rusted arm. "He was intent on taking me out- there was nothing else I could have done."

"Don't worry about that," Raven said, opening a portal to the Titans Tower living room. "Getting any of them on our side is going to be a miracle, and we must be prepared to fight them. Let's get you home and patched up, if we're going to win at this, we need to be at our best."

"I always knew we'd get high together at some point, Rae," Beast Boy said, carrying Cyborg into the Tower as Raven closed the portal, "but not like that."

* * *

 **BIG SORRY FOR THE LONG WAIT, I WAS FINISHING _THE NEW FACE OF JUSTICE_**

 **A COUPLE THINGS:**

 **- _KAKASHI GA KILL_ IS NOW THE MAIN PROJECT, WITH THIS AS THE SECONDARY STORY, BUT EXPECT UPDATES IN THE NEAR FUTURE**

 **-LIKE IN THE FIRST TWO INSTALLMENTS, THIS'LL BE BETWEEN 20-30 CHAPTERS, LET'S SAY 25**

 **-THIS WILL BE THE LAST PART OF THE _A NEW TITAN_ TRILOGY**

 **AS FOR THE STORY ITSELF, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS/PREDICTIONS? MIRA AND TOWA SEEM PRETTY TOUGH, WILL THEY SUCCEED IN THEIR SECRET, NEFARIOUS PLOT, OR WILL OUR HEROES PERSEVERE? HOW WILL ROBIN AND STARFIRE HANDLE CELL? WHERE WILL THE NEXT TIME CRYSTAL APPEAR WITHIN THAT SAGA? WHO WILL OUR DEMON HUNTERS FACE NEXT? ANY OTHER QUESTIONS/THOUGHTS/CONCERNS? PM ME OR REVIEW!**


	8. Myth of the Past, Hero of the Present

Trunks, Robin, and Starfire barreled through time, with the nervous Tamaranean checking the rearview mirror every couple of seconds. Robin noticed her worry. "We lost them for now, Star," Robin said, "they'll make themselves known again if they catch up."

She wasn't the only one with a troubled expression on her face. "Now I'm starting to wonder something about our friends back there," Trunks said.

"What is it, Trunks?" Starfire asked.

"Well," he said, "either I'm fending them off successfully, or they're not out to stop us."

Robin looked out the window as well, the paranoia inside the car creeping up on him. "They've trailed us at every stop," Robin said, "what else could they be doing?"

"They could be planning to revive Gohan," Starfire said, "I would imagine learning what the Saiyans can do would make them quite valuable to anyone searching for a powerful weapon."

"I noticed that they never seem to go for Gohan straight off," Trunks said, "maybe they just want to take me out first, but getting away from them so easily three times in a row isn't a coincidence."

"Who else would they go after?" Robin asked. "Gohan was the most powerful Z-Fighter of our time, letting us revive Gohan and have him fight with us will let us take out whoever they send our way."

"All the other Z-Fighters are alive," Starfire said.

Trunks' eyes narrowed. "Not all of them."

Starfire saw two purple blips appear in the rearview mirror. "They're here," she said, seeing the portal to their next stop opening in the distance. "Perhaps we should ask them ourselves?"

"Getting the likes of them to talk about their dreams and aspirations isn't an easy task," Trunks said.

"I have a feeling she knows that," Robin said, "the longer we let them stay in our way, they only become a bigger problem."

Their opponents rushed underneath them, firing back before they rushed through the portal. The car shook terribly with a hit to the undercarriage, making them lurch forward and flip through the entrance to the past after several minutes of uncontrolled spinning. They nosedived from the portal and into a bright, rocky plain with dust kicked up hundreds of feet in the air as if bombs had been going off all day. "That was a lucky shot, but not a fatal one," Trunks said, darting out the window with the Titans and carrying the car to safety.

"If we don't hurry, they'll be the ones getting off lucky," Robin said, bursting into the air and looking down at the battlefield. The Z-Fighters all looked broken, battered, and bruised from a tall, green and black insect of a humanoid with a green crown-like extension on his head, long, black wings and armor plates from his exoskeleton, and smooth, bluish gray skin on his eerily human face standing with a Super Saiyan's aura. He laughed at his fallen ring of opponents, with Vegeta laying on the ground barely conscious and a warrior close to them now laying in a pool of his own blood in a terrified Yamcha's arms. "Trunks?!"

"Cell looks far more formidable in person, his ki is incredible too," Starfire said, "he killed you, Trunks?"

"I told you I died once," Trunks said to gloss over the brutal image below, desperately trying to sense for the energy of the bandits, "and we missed Goku's by a few minutes, I hope that wasn't it, but I have a theory that this moment might matter more. You two stay here and swipe that crystal so we can get out of here, I'll find Mira and Towa."

Before Starfire could question it, Trunks had vanished in search of their ominous travel partners. She and Robin watched from a plateau far from the battle but close enough to feel the heat, keeping their eyes focused on the young boy in a tattered purple training uniform with flowing, spiky golden hair, emerald eyes fixed in a rage at the insect who had defeated his friends, and blood running down his forehead, arms, and exposed torso. "At such a young age," she said, watching the hero they knew as a man fight for the fate of them and their entire planet as just a boy, "such a great burden…"

Robin watched him closely in awe as the skies darkened from his raw power, ignoring his one broken, limp arm to draw everything he had in his little body into his one good arm. "I remember the Cell Games, at least I heard about it as a kid," Robin said.

"Ka… me…" Gohan announced, spiking the familiar blue wave of death on his hand.

"It was the event that convinced so many heroes to come out of the shadows to fight together, in case we were taken off guard like this again," Robin said.

"Ha… me…" Gohan continued, peaking Cell's interest.

"The Justice League did not believe it was real," Starfire said, noting the destroyed news vehicles scattered around the plains, "but something needed to change their minds."

"Something big did," Robin said, feeling the battlefield shake from the opposing forces' powers. "They didn't need to see it, to know it was happening."

Cell laughed at the last stand with a deep, rich voice, mirroring the attack. "Now you die!"

" _Ha!_ " Gohan screamed at the top of his lungs until his throat turned raw, blasting out a Kamehameha Wave larger than the two Titans had ever seen anyone fire before clash with a wave of equal size, swallowing the entire white, square stone arena with four tall, spiked pillars that chipped off into rubble as soon as the center of the clash consumed them.

"They could _feel_ it," Robin said, jumping back with Starfire as the clash consumed the rocky plateaus nearly a mile away from the center of the struggle for earth.

The other Z-Fighters flew away as fast as they could, but the winds swept up from the attack were overwhelmingly powerful and threw the two Titans to the ground. Robin looked up and his heart nearly stopped as the attack burnt the soles of his shoes. He backed up with a rocket of ki, barreling into Starfire trying to do just the same. They stumbled to their feet and shot back in the air while keeping their eye on the young warrior. Thankfully, they knew how it ended. Cell was having the time of his life, laughing confidently while pushing forward against Earth's last hope. "Man, at this rate, he's going to change the shape of the planet!" Krillin shouted.

"If there's a planet left," Piccolo growled nervously, shielding his eyes from the dust. "Cell…"

"This must be hard for you with all those wounds," Cell taunted, "I'm sure this makes them _burn!_ " Cell intensified his half of the clash, the horizon of the center inching closer to Gohan with every passing moment. He could feel the young man's strength fading from the shakiness in his opponent's arm. "And now this is where you end!"

Starfire watched Gohan nearly stumble headfirst into it, gasping as he barely got his footing back to continue holding on with every remaining ounce of his strength.

"I can feel you slipping!" Cell shouted.

"Masenko-Ha!" Piccolo roared from above, firing his attack passed down to Beast Boy at Cell's back.

"No, Mister Piccolo!" Gohan screamed, feeling him drop in vain.

"Kikoho!" Tien shouted.

"Kamehameha!" Yamcha yelled, falling with his best friend next to the Namekian.

One yellow shot from the sky caught Cell's ire, forcing the bug of a man to turn with a twisted grimace at the Saiyan. "Vegeta?!" he exclaimed, but still, his form barely faltered.

Starfire raised her hand, aiming it at Cell's legs. "Star, what are you doing?" Robin said, trying to divert her arm charging the green energy blast forming on her hand. "We can't alter the past, we could drastically change the future!"

"I don't think we are, Robin," Starfire said hurriedly, "take the crystal when you see it, I will give Gohan the edge!"

She fired the blast, hitting Cell's foot and dropping his leg two feet through the dirt. Cell gasped at the sudden burst of energy from the opponent's side that he couldn't suppress from trying to regain his footing first, but Gohan's attack started to burn his hands. Cell turned to the source of the blast, opening his mouth to curse out the Tamaranean and instead letting out his last scream of desperation as the blue wave from the young Saiyan broke free with a true warrior's cry, carrying Cell's ashes into space and dispersing the menace among the stars. Robin shielded his eyes from the blinding light, but the diamond shadow forming over Gohan's head forced Robin to trudge forward anyway. He crept up to the Saiyan wonder, swiping the crystal and darting away while he was too invested to care. Robin darted over to Starfire. "Now let's get out of here!"

Starfire gave one last heartfelt, sad glance to the Saiyan with the world on his shoulders, flying back to the car. They could see the bright epicenter of the fateful battle from miles away, but didn't have time to dwell on it. "Get in," Trunks said from inside the car. "We have to move to our next checkpoint right now if we have any chance of catching up to Mira and Towa."

"They completely neglected the crystal," Robin said, holding it up for him to see.

The Titans got into the car and the time travelers took off. "It's not Gohan they're after," Trunks said.

"Then who?" the Titans asked.

Trunks scowled in the rearview. "The only person who could beat him."

* * *

"It's too hot out here, man!" Cyborg said, wiping away sweat from the human half of his forehead. "Are you sure he's all the way down here, Raven?"

Raven pulled out the keys to the large, orange spaceship built for five people the leaned up against, sending it off into the sky to call on later. They hopped off the top of the small building they secretly touched down on, landing in the alleyway and turning into the bustling sidewalks more or less hidden with the occasional glance from nervous fans here or there. "He has to be," she said, passing a banner that read "All Year, All Mardi Gras, All New Orleans" in bright purple letters in the distance where a large crowd converged upon, all ready to party.

"I wish Robin and Star were here," Garfield said, "we could've had some fun while hunting down the other gates."

They blended into the odd crowd, people of all shapes and sizes moving down the busy streets to dixieland jazz blasting from all around to set the light mood. The smell of cajun spices lingered in the air that was hot and ripe with magical energies that nearly overwhelmed the daughter of Trigon.

"On second thought," Beast Boy said, seeing market stands left and right with roasted pigs, fried chicken, and seafood of all kinds getting waved in his face, "maybe we shouldn't stay here for too long."

"The event just started," Raven said. "It's harder to pick up on him here than if he was anywhere else, but I've got him locked on. You'll know him when you see him."

"It's harder to pick up on him here?" Cyborg said. "You're not telling me there are other demons here, right?"

"This is New Orleans, Cy," she said as if it was obvious, "this place known for food and voodoo, and with pompous Europeans using voodoo foolishly to open doors that they couldn't close over two and a half centuries, it turned this place into a Mecca for my father's children and spawn."

"How are we going to find our guy if one out of two people here are demonic?" Beast Boy asked. "It's like looking at something with sonar but everything's a red dot."

"We're looking for Gluttony," Raven said. "Follow the food."

The trio of Titans pushed their way through the crowds slowly but surely, going from food table to food table in search for their target. "What does he look like, Rae?"

"No clue," Raven said, "the last time any of my siblings saw him was a decade ago. I have his ki locked on, we just have to catch up."

"For someone who's supposed to eat everything, he's not wasting any time!" Beast Boy said. "Does he even taste it before it goes down?"

They reached the city hall where the festival was blocked at the steps, with a long buffet table managed by the state's best chefs feeding the mouth of one gargantuan man wearing wide, red shorts, a blue tee shirt far too small, and a brown cul de sac on pale white skin, The chefs looked disturbed as they handed plates to the man gorging them out of their other customers left and right, slamming the plates down on the ground as soon as he finished them. "Apparently not," Cyborg said with disgust.

"We can't fight him here," Raven said, "you two lead him out of the festival, I'm going to take this one."

"I thought your magic didn't work against your siblings," Beast Boy said, "I can-"

"I'm not going to use magic," Raven said, "you both got hurt fighting my last two brothers, and Gluttony's magic is more advanced than the others."

Beast Boy looked into her eyes earnestly. "We don't expect anything in return from you," Beast Boy said, "as long as you're here with us and happy, that's all that matters."

Raven turned away quickly to hide her blush. "Just go,"

Garfield nodded to Cy and the two Titans stood on either side of the demon. He had a huge face with beady, yellow eyes, stubble caked with food and sauce, and generally gave off the impression that he was fairly sticky. They watched the chef closely as they shakily passed another plate of brisket, mashed potatoes, and corn to the sin, but this plate never reached his gullet. "Hey!" he shouted in a whiny voice, turning sharply to the machine of a man holding the plate. "That was mine!"

Cyborg looked him in the eye, chomping it down to make the pale sin's skin burn bright red. "You want it back?" he said, opening his arms asking for a fight. "Did I piss you off, Jabba?"

"I'm gonna turn you into scrap metal!" Gluttony roared, his black aura exploding and blowing the buffet tables back.

The two Titans dashed over the boundary lines for the party and the demon barreled after them like a linebacker into downtown. "That was easy," Beast Boy said.

"That wasn't the difficult part," Cyborg said, darting into the nearest dead end alleyway.

"I got you now!" Gluttony said, blocking the exit with his girth. His hands burned with black energy and he focused one hand each on the Titans. "I think I might just cook you, save you for lunch! Azarath Metrion _Zinthos!_ "

A black bolt crashed in front of Gluttony in the shape of a bird with glowing red eyes. Raven rose to her feet, glaring into the beast's eyes. "I think you know why I'm here."

Gluttony focused his hands on her. "You can't win, sister."

"That's what they all say," Raven hissed, striking hard and fast. Gluttony stumbled back from the hit that did practically nothing.

"Was that supposed to hurt?" the demon scoffed. "I'm gonna turn you into ash if you fight like that!"

"I was making space," Raven said, drawing her hands into a diamond over her chest. "Ki Blast Cannon!" she barked, blasting him into the alleyway across the street with a yellow flash of burning chi. She turned to her friends, holding her hand out. "Just wait there."

She rushed across the busy street, hopping and flipping over cars before twirling into the alleyway to deliver a speedy spin kick to the mammoth's fat face. She crushed his thick rimmed glasses with a knee strike to the nose and flipped back with a kick to the chin, landing with her finger pointed right at his chest. "Dodonpa!" she exclaimed, firing her teacher's signature yellow beam of dense spiritual power.

Gluttony countered with a blast of his own dark energy, blundering forward and swiping with slow, sluggish, but heavy strikes. Raven dodged the last one just barely, watching a few dark strands of her hair fall off drained of nutrients and white. "Hey! Where'd you learn how to do that?"

Raven punched him in the gut, doubling him over from the force. "Father wouldn't be happy with me if I told you," she said, blowing him into the bricks with a hook to the jaw and blasting him in the face. The savagery continued, with Raven standing him up with a kick to the chin. She kicked him in the chest and send him tumbling into a brown dumpster, striking the black blood from his engorged lips and drawing her hands to her chest. "Ki Blast Cannon!"

Gluttony let out an inhuman screech as the flash burnt off chunks of skin, swiping forward desperately to get in any hit at all.

"Dodonpa!" she shouted again, this time piercing his elbow to drop his swinging arm. He looked into her hand and his jaw unhinged for one final scream as she fired, turning him into a large pile of black dust. She turned around, gesturing the other Titans over and fastened her hood.

"Three down, three to go," Cyborg said.

"Who's next, Rae?" Beast Boy asked.

The trio exited the alleyway, walking away from the battleground unscathed for once. "Envy," she said, "he's going to be a bit harder to take down without attracting attention like the last three, so we all need to be ready to fight our way out of whatever situation he drops us in. Envy always has an entourage."

A silence fell over them as they walked, simply decompressing from the stress and violence they've endured over the past few days and nights.

Beast Boy's attention was stolen by a tall tofu square sitting on a platter surrounded by spinach and drizzling with a spicy sauce that carried through the air and invited him over. "Hey, uh, guys?"

Cyborg and Raven looked at him quizzically.

"Can we stay for a couple minutes?" Beast Boy said with a bashful laugh. "I'm actually kinda hungry."


End file.
